Current research is in the categories of navigation, collision avoidance, target acquisition, target approach, fetch, and return to base. The robots are equipped with sonar for navigation and collision avoidance and a camera for navigation, visual target recognition, obstacle avoidance, and target tracking. The robots are controlled via a radio modem and a PC running the Linux operating system. The robots we are using are Pioneer and Pioneer AT models provided by ActivMedia.

The robots are programmed using the C programming language and the Saphira libraries provided by ActivMedia. These libraries provide high-level wrappers for the varying functions available on the robots. Through these libraries, the robots can be programmed to "see" through a CCD camera, "hear" and "feel" through their sonars and bump sensors, and interact with their environment through movement and gripper arms.

In this series of pages, you will find descriptions of our experiments, pieces of source code that we used to control the robots, biographies of the students involved with the robot project, and stories of the trials and tribulations of dealing with these foul beasts.