Intelligent Mobile Stool (IMS)
Student project, MA Intelligent Systems, winter term 2009/10
Participants
- Andreas Kipp
- Dimitri Petker
- Matthias Schröder
- Dominik Weissgerber
Tutor
Project objectives
- Creating a mobile stool
- Equipping the stool with capabilities for intelligent behaviour
- Implementing a camera based controlling unit for the stool
- Controlling the stool via tangible interaction
Description
The task was to create a self-driving stool that can detect people in a room and offer itself for seating. A camera is installed under the ceiling for visual search and marker tracking. A table representing the room can be used to set tangible objects, which are monitored via a webcam. Such an object corresponds to an actual mobile stool in the room. The stool is controlled via a wireless connection based on coordinates calculated from the pictures of the webcam.Results
- Stool built from scratch
- Control for second unit (Pioneer platform) running
- Software completed and tested
- Control-table (tangible interface) created
Conclusion
The stool was built with two motors and a robust corpus. The execution of remote control was successful. Due to problems in regards to tracking the stool via marker-tracking software, it can only be driven remotely. The Pioneer platform is running smoothly. Control via tangible objects works well and the placement of objects on the control-table results in the stool navigating towards appropriate positions in real room coordinates. The table for tangible objects was created and uses a webcam to track the movement of the objects, which correspond to the mobile platforms. Software components, such as the potentialplanner, are implemented and functioning.Images
IMSNavigator - prototype software used to define goals for mobile objects:
The built hardware:
