More information about the congress and participation can be found here.

A small note: I just uploaded the final release of the software and documentation of the Aia-project. You can find it here.

Anyway, since the applications for the Aia project have been developed, it’s time to fulfill my promise to you (the reader). Since I announced my project I’ve said that I would release the software under an open-source license. That’s exactly what I’m doing now… You can download the code of the Aia project under the GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) here:

Click me to get the source!

The package contains the source for both the program on the Arduino and Aia|CP. Besides that you can also find some documentation in the package. This documentation is currently incomplete, but will be completed as the project will get its own website.

For the time being I’ll give support for the Aia project here. So if you’ve problems, please place a comment.

– Michael

Update: A Google Code project has been created. You can find it here.

The software of the Aia is split in two parts: Aia and Aia|CP. Aia is the program that is running on the robot itself. It’s main responsibility concerns the hardware. Aia|CP is the application that is running on the PC. Aia|CP analyses webcam images from the Aia, calculates pathfinding and provides a communication layer between the robot and the computer. Aia|CP can be considered as the server (or Mother Brain, as I call it) and Aia as the client.

When you start Aia|CP you’re greeted by a simple splash screen:

Nothing complicated to see here

The splash screen of Aia|CP is not much more than eye-candy, so lets move on.

The Colour Analyser is a bit more interesting. Unfortunately Aia|CP isn’t able to retrieve images from the webcam on Linux at the moment. I’m working on a cross-platform library that will solve that problem. But you’ll hear more about that when that library will be released.
As for the Colour Analyser itself. Of every webcam image the Colour Analyser retrieves it makes a analysis. In this analysis the image is split into the colours red, green and blue. Of each colour the Colour Analyser makes a histogram which is then used to make some calculations (the maths are quite easy). Besides that the Colour Analyser also generates a 3d colour cube. But the most important feature is the ability for the end-user to manipulate the parameters of the Colour Analyser. These parameters are used internally to determine whether a colour has been detected or not.

There’s no doubt… The computer recognises black

Moving on to something I finished today: the AI Control. The AI Control is the main interface point between end-user and computer when it comes to the Artificial Intelligence. With the AI Control the end-user can select start and target positions, manipulate the virtual pathfinding map and set the state of the Aia.

Possible output

And last, but not least: the Lua Terminal. The Lua Terminal provides a simple interface with the Lua scripting language. It can be used to access low-level features of components of Aia|CP. Thanks to this it’s possible to send commands to the Aia directly. An example of this can be seen in screenshot. Similar functions are available for the Colour Analyser and the AI Control. Speaking of which, these functions are available in two flavours: a OOP-approach and an imperative approach. Both of the following commands give the same result:

> caSetTarget(0, 0, 0)
> ColourAnalyser:setTarget(0, 0, 0)

Also worth noting, the Lua Terminal outputs exactly what Lua outputs. So if you encounter an error you’ll see that in the terminal.

A simple terminal for the Lua scripting language

Well, that’s all for now. If everything goes according to schedule the project will soon (in a few weeks) be released under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

– Michael

Aia is build around the Arduino. The Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform. It’s a cheap solution for developing hardware. The fact that the Arduino is cheap doesn’t mean that it’s low-quality. You can make great things with it as it’s highly flexible. Besides that it’s also very easy to use as the Arduino uses a programming language which is based upon C and C++.

Photo by Nicholas Zambetti. Taken from Arduino.cc

But lets talk a bit about the project itself. The goal of the project is to create a robot that is able to do simple pathfinding. Aia will perceive the world through colour analysis and distance estimations. Maybe it will also be able to recognize shapes, but we’re not sure about that yet.

At the moment of writing our control panel (Aia|CP) is able to perform colour analysis of webcam images. It also contains a Lua terminal. And it’s able to set up a basic connection with Aia. On the other things we still need to work.

But that’s all for now. You’ll hear more about it in the future. And when it’s done the source code will probably become open-source.

- Michael

PS: In case you didn’t notice it… I’m not the only person working on this project. I’m just the developer. Bryan (surname-less) is responsible for the electronics. And Arjan (surname-less) is responsible for the design.