CS 480: Robotics & 3D Printing (Fall 2015)

Announcements

• Final grades are posted on UAOnline, and detailed grading information is available on NetRun (reset your NetRun password using your @alaska.edu email address).
• Selected project 2 blog posts:
• Generating support structures for 3D printing using a neural network
• Motion tracking robot sentry turret
• Rendering IR sensor data in Unity
• Rostock Max V2 assembly & tuning
• Web-controlled RC car with RobotMoose
• Parametric Mecanum wheel generator in OpenSCAD
• The final exam time, 3:15-5:15pm Friday, December 18, will be an in-class discussion on the future of robotics.
• The take-home final exam is due by midnight Friday, December 18 on Blackboard  (log in first).
• Project 2 blog post URLs are due by midnight Friday, December 18 on Blackboard  (log in first).  
• Monday's class will be a project work session, to get advice to finish your projects.
• I'll look at your Project 2 rough drafts in class on Monday, November 23.  Bring tools so you can work on your project during that class.
• Project 2 topics are due in class Friday, November 6.
• The take-home midterm exam is due by midnight Sunday, October 25 on Blackboard  (log in first).
• Selected project 1 blog posts:
• Plex Bot, an OpenSCAD humanoid robot from a stack of servos (uses Project Biped poser software)
• Chocolate extruder
• Dual Extruder mod for the Rostock MAX V2
• Prusa i3 debugging and calibration process
• 3D printed finger brace (ring splint)
• Raspberry Pi 2 case in OpenSCAD
• Your final Project 1 blog post URL is due by midnight Wednesday, October 21 on Blackboard  (log in first).
• Your post  should include pictures, video, equations, and/or code, and cover:
• What problem you were trying to solve
• What other people have done on the problem
• What you tried to do
• What worked well
• What you would do differently if you could do it again
• Examples: calibrating a thermistor, OpenSCAD intro, my Alaska90 printer
• (The post needs an URL but need not be public, or under your real name.)
• Project 1 in-class presentations were the week of October 12-16.
• Homework 1 is to make a useful 3D model with OpenSCAD, export it to an STL file, slice this to gcode, and print it.  Show your print to me in class.  Upload the digital components by Monday, October 5 by midnight on Blackboard  (log in first).
• Project 1's rough draft show and tell will be Monday, October 5 in-class.
• Homework 0 was due Friday, September 11 by midnight on Blackboard (log in first).  See the HW0 answer key, and see your grade on NetRun (reset your NetRun password using your @alaska.edu email address).
• Fill out Survey 0 to tell me what course content we should cover.
• Welcome back!  The syllabus is posted below--in particular be aware of the prerequisites, because we'll be doing quite a bit of programming, and our computational geometry and control theory will have some fairly heavy calculus.  This course has no book, but if you've been meaning to buy a 3D printer (especially a kit), this is your official excuse to actually buy one!  It's not required for the course, but the alternative is borrowing one in Chapman 103.

Reference Material

• How to use the 3D printer in Chapman 103
• Serial driver installed in adjacent lab computer Friday 10-09
• Survey of 3D printing software & hardware

Lecture Notes

• Underwater robotics: bouyancy, center of drag, center of thrust, 12-04
• Demo: landing a UAV on a roomba, 12-02
• Multi-axis coordinated control, 11-30
• Robot failure analysis, 11-25
• Project 2 rough drafts, 11-23
• In-class exercise: integrated robot design, 11-20
• Robot localization via blinking lights, 11-18
• Web-enabled robotics visualizations, at the Data to Decisions Visualization Workshop hands-on session in IARC 401, Monday 11-16
• PID control in existing robots, 11-13
• Flying a Parrot UAV indoors localized with a Kinect (see technical paper, parrot kinect code), 11-11
• UAV flight stability is not as good as a hummingbird (stable up to 20 mph)
• Aero Beam (see technical paper and presentation), 11-09
• PID for UAV altitude control simulation
• Arduino aero-beam control software (.tar.gz)
• UAF team's NASA Robotic Mining Competition robot demo (see team blog), 11-06
• OpenCV Optical Flow computation, 11-04
• Try simple optical flow in OpenCV (or .tar.gz)
• Monday hands-on activity: OpenCV object tracking, 11-02
• Download and install the OpenCV library before class
• Try computer vision marker detection: bullseye and aruco (or .tar.gz)
• OpenCV, 10-30
• Per-pixel access simple color-matching OpenCV example
• Coordinate systems for robot sensor fusion, 10-27
• Hands on with RobotMoose and the Create 2, 10-26
• Algorithms for sensor integration: ICP, RANSAC, SLAM, 10-23
• Using incomplete sensor data for path planning, 10-21
• 2D mobile robot LIDAR simulator (.zip, .tar.gz)
• Monday we'll be trying the Kinect 360 and One sensors, and collecting their features & limitations.  10-19
• Path Following and Proportional - Integral - Derivative (PID) control, 10-09
• Path following simulation
• PID for UAV altitude control simulation
• Path Planning with OpenSCAD, 10-07 
• Path planning simulation
• Path Planning: Obstacle Avoidance, 10-02
• Path Planning: Configuration Space, 09-28
• OpenSCAD servo arm design in-class exercise, 09-25
• RC Servos and managing current, 09-23
• OpenSCAD for complex parts, like self-replicating 3D printers, 09-21
• OpenSCAD for 3D part design, 09-18 (please download it before class so you can run the examples!)
• 3D Printer deposition technology & filament choices, 09-16
• Motor types: brushed DC, brushless 3-phase, steppers, 09-11
• 3-phase motor simulator
• 4-wire stepper motor simulator
• Arduino: Microcontroller inputs, outputs, and control, 09-09
• Overview of Robotics & 3D Printing, 09-04

Orion Lawlor

• Associate Professor, Computer Science
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 2004 Ph.D.
• Computer graphics; parallel programming; robotics; 3D printing.
• Duckering 529
• 907-474-7678

Office Hours:

• By Appointment

• lawlor@alaska.edu