1. Project Overview: The purpose of this project is to make use of existing robotic behaviors to develop intuitive, easy to use robot / human interfaces. Principal Investigator: James McClintock Evolution Robotics - Scorpion Sponsors: NASA - Oklahoma Space Grant Consortium OSU – MARHES Lab Evolution Robotics – BehaviorNetwork Development Current and Future Work: The Evolution Robotics Scorpion robot in conjunction withthe ERSP software interface was chosen for this project. This platform provides a variety of modules and allows for easy creation of behavior networks for development of the robot/human interfaces. The emphasis thus far has been on learning the ERSP development environment and using this platform in conjunction with a Tablet PC or PDA to control the robot. Future work will examine the use of the ERSP vision algorithms for controlling the robot using hand gestures. This project will also explore ways to enhance the Scorpion’s mapping libraries to allow users to easily coordinate tasks within an explored environment.

2. Project Overview: This project investigates ways to use robotics to develop children’s interest in engineering. Specifically, we are creating a set of robotic games that give children a chance to interact with the ERSP Scorpion robot. Student Investigators: Jeremy Danforth, James McClintock, & Brent Perteet The Development Platform Includes Two Scorpion Robots Sponsors: National Science Foundation OSU – MARHES Lab Boy Scouts Visit MARHES Current and Future Work: The team is currently examining the Scorpion’s many low level behaviors and looking for ways to combine them into higher level units that can be used to create games. For example, a simple color tracking algorithm was developed to allow the robots to follow objects of a specific color. We have also created a program that allows the Scorpion to be controlled using pen input and a Tablet PC. Last year a group of boy scouts visited the laboratory and were fascinated by the robots. As this project develops, we hope to encourage more such visits from children and allow them not only to watch, but to interact with the robots!

3. Color Tracking: Tablet PC Pen Control: A color tracking behavior network (shown in the center image below) was developed for the Scorpion using Evolution Robotics’ Statistical Color Detection behavior. After the user chooses a color, the robot will find the largest region of that color within its field of view and move toward it. The image below shows two scorpions following a remote controlled robot in an experiment to test the algorithm. Using Evolution Robotics’ MoveTo task together with Microsoft’s Tablet PC Software Development Kit, a pen controlled path planning application was developed for the Scorpion. This program allows the user to instruct the Scorpion to move along a specified path by drawing a curve on the screen. In the future, mapping will be added to allow for easy control of the robot within a mapped region. Color Tracking Behavior Network Color Tracking Experiment Path Planning Using Pen Input