I found this in my news feeds. An article about using visible light instead of, or to augment, short range wireless communication, with quite high [100 Mbit/s] bandwidth.

Data are traveling by light

If the power needed to drive the transmitter leds (and total amount of light) is in a reasonable range, this technique could be used to communicate with or between [mobile] robots. This looks like much the same concept as infra-red remote controls, but with considerably higher bandwidth. The visible light is more line of sight though. Any opaque object in the light path would block the signal. Some infra-red systems will ‘bounce’ signals off of surfaces to work ‘around’ direct obstructions.

For robot communications [mesh network], maybe more directional channels would work better [to reduce power requirements]. Use one or more leds in a curved reflector. Depending on the shape of the reflector used, that could limit the communications to a single ‘target’, or maybe only to [near] a single ‘plane’.

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Phil

Here is a link to an article from Technology Review about GPS style positioning technology that use small [it says the size of a hardback book] land based units.  Accuracy down to a few centimeters.  This version uses the same frequency [band] as wi-fi, but apparently with higher power. A single unit could cover several kilometers.  This is real technology already being used.

Ultrafine Location Fixes

One of the company co-founders is quoted as saying

Tracking goods and machines with high accuracy can enable greater use of robotics and automation.

Assuming a “location hotspot” is available, or can be setup at reasonable cost, this looks like an opportunity for robotics location awareness. Depending on thoses costs, down to the consumer level. The existing home robots that need to have hardware “electronic walls” installed could potentially use position sensing and a virtual wall instead.

How about

• a sumobot that knows its position relative to the ‘ring’ well enough that it does not need to completely rely on optical sensing of the white edges?
• a line follower that memorizes the path based on absolute position information? The high speed line followers could ‘plan’ acceleration, deceleration, and turns based on their position
• a Darpa style challenge where the ‘contestant’ is given only the geo-location of the goal

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Phil

I have been teaching introductory programming for the Arduino to a weekly class the past few weeks.  I missed collecting the email contact information for some of the people who joined the class in the last couple of weeks.  In the hope that they read these postings, I am publishing a notice here.

Here is a small homework reading assignment for the WCRS programming class attendees.  Read the Software Development Methodology article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology) on wikipedia, at least up to the start of “Subtopics”.  From those methodology descriptions, decide which of methodologies are being used for projects by people at WCRS.  Why did you pick that / those methodologies?  Which ones seem like they would fit?  Again, why?

To be discussed in class.

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Phil

The online registration form for the 2011 games is now available.  See the ‘registration‘ link on the ‘2011 Robot Games‘ page.  Or use the links in the above

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Phil

The freshly elected executive committee for the next year are:

Hi all,

Next Saturday, October 16th, we will proceed to re-elect our executive committee. Members of the society would be able to vote or nominate executive members including: president, treasurer, secretary and directors.

Also, at same occasion, will be held the first meeting for the Robotgames 2011. If you have nay suggestions,comments, or if you want to volunteer on the organization committee, feel free to come to the meeting.

Location: Aerospace Museum of Calgary

Robotic society executive 10:30

Robotgames committee meeting 11:30

Dave Levesque