RoboCup: Robot Soccer!

A presentation in the Undergraduate Research Kaleidoscope: Library East Commons Performance Space, February 9, 2009Runtime: 20 seconds (07 finals)Runtime: 7:24 minutes (Bardagjy edit)Runtime: 7:24 minutes (Bardagjy)The RoboCup Small Size Robotic Soccer League exists to drive research in robotics and artificial intelligence and the systems which compose those fields. In the Small Size League, teams of five fully autonomous robots play soccer with an orange golf ball in two fifteen minute halves. Due to size restrictions (the robots must be 180 mm in diameter), significant integration and power issues, which are rarely seen in traditional robotics, must be overcome. Additionally, due to the fast paced fully autonomous nature of the game, sophisticated control systems must be developed including systems such as path planning, obstacle avoidance, strategy and artificial intelligence systems. In this work, the development of a robotic system to compete in the RoboCup Small Size Robotic Soccer league is described. This work describes a novel combination of subsystems including mechanical, electrical and software which will hopefully prove successful in this year’s competition. In particular, this work describes the development process and offers some insight into the decisions and trade offs which were made.Tucker Balc

Low dimensionality spectral sensing for low cost material discrimination and identification

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-193).Spectroscopy is a powerful tool in material identification, characterization and discrimination. Unfortunately industrial and laboratory spectrometers are typically very large, costly, and inconvenient. The aim of this thesis is to broaden the awareness and appeal of spectroscopic sensing modalities by exploring specialized, rather than general purpose instruments. Rather than sensing the entire spectrum, these devices work by observing just the particular spectral features needed to perform identification or discrimination. This approach greatly simplifies the instrument reducing the cost, size, power consumption, and analysis complexity by many orders of magnitude. In this work the anatomy of such specialized sensors is explored by way of a thorough discussion of illuminators, current sources, photodetectors, photodiode amplifiers, control systems and part selection. In the following chapters, instruments are designed and fabricated, and their tradeoffs are enumerated and discussed. Finally, these building-blocks are combined to construct several working prototypes which are informally characterized.by Andrew Matthew Bardagjy.S.M

Gaze Control for Human Robotic Interaction

Lionel London, Physics; Andy Bardagjy, Electrical Engineering; David Friedman, Electrical Engineering gave presentations on the topic of Robotics on November 26, 2007, Library East Commons, Georgia Tech LibraryRuntime: 41:44 minute