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The IEEE ICRA 2008 tutorial workshop on Modular Robotic Systems for Rapid Robotic Solutions will be a full day hands-on tutorial on experimenting with and programming CKbot, a type of modular reconfigurable robot on Monday the May 19th, 2008. The competition will be held on May 21nd and 22nd, 2008.

The tutorial consists of three sections:

  • Section 1 presents the state of the art on modular reconfigurable robots, the current designs, capabilities and also introduces a programming environment for developing various locomotion gaits and manipulation tasks.

  • Section 2 divides participants into groups, each working towards solving a common task with different configurations or gaits as staged exercises for learning.

  • Section 3 is a final competition at the end of the day, which is a practice run of the ICRA Challenge: Planetary Robotic Contingency. http://icra.wustl.edu/events/contingency.html

Participants shall learn about modular reconfigurable robots, and gain the ability to program and assemble these robots to rapidly solve problems they have no knowledge of a priori. An integrated simulation environment is provided to aid in initial testing and rapid prototyping of configurations and movements.


Motivation

The motivation of giving this tutorial is two fold.

The first is to present and advertise a modular reconfigurable robot system (the design of which and SDK we hope to make freely available) and give participants a hands-on experience in creating and controlling a complete working modular system. Participants who are new to modular robotics will learn about these systems. Participants who are researchers in this field can learn about this system and contribute their knowledge to the development of future versions.

The second is in conjunction with the ICRA 2008 Robot Challenge called the Planetary Robotic Contingency, this event simulates an unexpected problem occurring at a planetary habitat, where a robotic solution must be quickly developed and deployed, using only existing resources. The intent of this event is to develop versatile robotic systems and software that can be adapted quickly to address unexpected events.

The tutorial will provide a low investment option for conference members to participate in the challenge. Researchers can learn one example modular architecture and software and then exercise their software and engineering skills in the competition and develop a rapid robot solution methodology.


Topics

  • Introduction to modular reconfigurable systems
  • Introduction to the ICRA robotics competition
  • Mechanics of modular systems
  • Electronics of modular systems
  • Programming modular systems with CKBot
  • Exercises
  • Practice competition

Presenters

  • Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania, confirmed
  • Matt Picolli, University of Pennsylvania, confirmed
  • Bill Smart, Washington University in St. Louis, confirmed

Intended audience

The intended audience is two fold.
1) General robotics researchers, people interested in competing in the ICRA 2008 Planetary Contingency Challenge, as well as

2) Modular robotic researchers who want to more deeply learn a chain robot system and develop SDK’s for this system (or borrow ideas from the current SDK for their hardware systems).

Space is limited due to a fixed amount of hardware.