Software

System Overview

graph
  subgraph High Level
    HL1[Trajectory Planner]
    HL2[Voice Recognition]
  end
  subgraph Chess Piece Robot
    direction LR
    LL1[Differential Drive Controller]
    LL2[Driver]
    LL3[Motors] 
  end
  subgraph Vision 
    direction LR
    V1[Apriltag Localization]
  end
  subgraph Control
    C1[Trajectory Execution ROS nodes] 
  end
  %% Low level
  LL1 --> LL2
  LL2 --> LL3

  %% Behavior Planning
  HL2 --> HL1
  HL1 --> C1

  %% Vision 
  V1 --> C1
  V1 --> HL1

  %% Control 
  C1 --> LL1

  %% Links
  click LL1 href "http://wiki.purduearc.com/wiki/wizards-chess/software#differential-drive-controller" "Label"
  click C1 href "http://wiki.purduearc.com/wiki/wizards-chess/software#trajectory-execution-controller" "Label"
  click HL1 href "http://wiki.purduearc.com/wiki/wizards-chess/software#trajectory-planner" "Label"
  click HL2 href "http://wiki.purduearc.com/wiki/wizards-chess/software#voice-recognition" "Label"
  click V1 href "http://wiki.purduearc.com/wiki/wizards-chess/software#apriltag-localization" "Label"

  classDef not_started fill:#ff8181
  classDef in_progress fill:#ffba82
  classDef done fill:#81ff9b
  class V1,HL1,HL2,LL1,C1 not_started
  %% class C1 in_progress
  class LL2,LL3 done

graph
  l1[Not Started]
  l2[In Progress]
  l3[Done]
classDef not_started fill:#ff8181
classDef in_progress fill:#ffba82
classDef done fill:#81ff9b
class l1 not_started
class l2 in_progress
class l3 done

High Level

Voice Recognition

Problem

Given a voice command such as “Knight to e4”, generate a machine readable command that can be inputted to the Trajectory Planner.

Potential Approach

Can use python-based speech recognition libraries to output raw text, which can easily be converted to a ROS message that is consumed by the Trajectory Planner

graph LR 
  A1[Voice Input]
  A2[Speech Recognition Python Library]
  A3[ROS wrapper node]
  A4[Behavior Planner]

A1 --> A2
A2 --> A3
A3 --> A4

Trajectory Planner

Problem

Given that we have just a camera which can localize (know the position of) each chess piece and find the center of any empty board square, how do we describe the movement of a chess piece from one square to another to complete a move using information we can actually execute on the robot, while not creating a collision with another piece?

Potential Approach

Since our input to the system is in pixels, we can:

  1. Query the x,y position of where the piece starts and ends
  2. Create a time-dependent, x,y-coordinate-valued trajectory between the two x,y positions (could be as simple as a straight line)
  3. If the above trajectory results in a collision (can be determined using the distance formula between pieces and knowing the radius of each piece), create a trajectory for the other piece to move out of the way. (Take a look at flocking algorithms, linked below)
  4. Now that we have a set of trajectories, send them to the trajectory execution node of each respective chess piece to be executed concurrently

Vision

Apriltag Localization

Problem

How can we determine the position of each chess piece and every empty square on the board?

Potential Approach

Apriltags are a simple way to solve this accurately. With just an Apriltag on the four corners of the board (still need to measure square size manually) and an Apriltag on each chess piece, we can determine the xyz position of the entire system.

Control

Trajectory Execution Controller Nodes

Problem

How do we ensure that the robot is correctly executing the trajectory given by the Trajectory Planner, and if it is inaccurate, how do we control for it?

Potential Approach

Fortunately, we can look at control theory to give us a good solution: an LQR controller. This essentially is an optimization algorithm with weighted costs that the algorithm minimizes.

Also, a Pure Pursuit algorithm may be used as well.

For any algorithm, the inputs are the trajectory itself, the current localized position of the chess piece, the target position, and the output is a Twist ROS message velocity command (the linear and angular velocity of the robot).

This would be running on the master computer that has access to camera input and the will be communicated to each robot as there will be a trajectory execution node for each robot.

Robot

Differential Drive Controller

Problem

The robot motors don’t understand what Twist linear/angular velocity is, just the speed and direction at which they need to spin. So how do we convert the Twist to individual motor speeds (just a value between 0-255)?

Potential Approach

For different types of steering geometries, there are different control algorithms used to steer mobile vehicles (Skid-steer, Ackermann, differential drive, etc).

For our robot, it is a differential drive steering configuration, specific to the geometry of two wheels on either side and a caster wheel for stability.

This would be running on the robot.

Problems not described yet

  • Structuring the robot-level systems so they are modular and can easily spawned for all the chess pieces.
  • Ensuring that the system is controlled (i.e cameras can see all apriltags at all times, etc)
  • Playing against an engine
  • Simplifying the interface with a human (app?, website?)

Resources

Tools

ROS

GitHub

C++

  • In depth tutorial playlist for C++
    • Recommended:
      • if/else, loops, functions, classes
      • Pointers/References
      • Smart pointers
      • Dynamic Arrays (std::vector)
  • Very useful numeric libraries
    • Eigen: Extremely efficient matrix math library

Python

  • Tutorial
  • Important to understand:
    • Basics are good - variables + logic, functions, classes

Numpy

Must use when working with large arrays (i.e images)

  • Tutorial
  • Important to understand:
    • Creating arrays
    • slicing + indexing
    • reshaping
    • linear algebra

OpenCV

Use for computer vision and image transformations like color detection, tracking, etc

  • Tutorial
  • Important to understand:
    • image transformation
    • thresholding
    • read/write images from file
    • resizing
    • tracking
Last modified August 14, 2022: added a lot of final revisions (58931f1)