Summer School of Robotics

Bratislava, Slovakia, 28th June - 12th July, 2008

" The technical part was well prepared and eye-catchy. At some times, however, the mathematics were hard to follow on slides. I mean, in order to understand these things you need to exercise them on your own. "
Participant

See also the the report from the BEST, and a Slovak press release.

Contents

1. Program
2. Information
3. Registration
4. Galleries
5. Archives

 

NEW! List of projects

• Robolution_Example_Project - look, edit, copy and paste to Your page with a project description

1. Calimocho - line following and obstacle avoiding LEGO robot
2. Carlobot - walking humanoid LEGO robot
3. Crawling robot 2/1 is a six legged Boe-Bot robot
4. Firefighter - LEGO project of a fire fighting robot
5. Lipstick grabber - the dream of many womans (Boe-Bot)
6. Lost&Found -- robot Boe-Bot formerly lost was found again
7. Try again - creative LEGO project with a robot detecting and reacting to an object in front of it
8. X Line Follower is an eXtra Line Following Boe-Bot robot
9. Love Bots are simply two Boe-Bot robots which fall in love
10. NorthBot with this robot You always now where to go
11. SonarBot gets its inspiration from bats

The Boe-Bot family used in course.

NEW!: The list of participants is available here.

" I would like to thank all professors for their devotion to this course.
Ďakujem! "
Participant

All the activities except the laboratory workshops are open to the public. You can visit any lectures and tutorials listed here PLUS You can participate on the projects which will be solved during these days.

Program

NEW!: Latest version of the TIMETABLE is available here.

Following topics/presentations were presented:

• History of the word Robot and the cultural context of robotics.
  prof. RNDr. Jozef Kelemen, DrSc. (Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic)
  Further reading:
  • The Mechanical Mind in History. Edited by Philip Husbands, Owen Holland and Michael Wheeler. MIT Press, April 2008, ISBN-10: 0-262-08377-9.
  • Horáková, Kelemen: Čapek, Turing, von Neumann, and the 20th Century Evolution of the Concept of Machine
  • Horáková, Kelemen: Robots - Some Cultural Roots''
  • Horáková, Kelemen: Robot: The True Story of the Word
  

• Lecture History of the robotics.
  Assoc. prof. Ing. Peter Hubinský, PhD. (FEI STU, Slovakia)
  Illustrated lecture about the history of the robotics - from ancient inventions to the latest research projects. Information about technical and also non-technical aspects of the robotics evolution. Links:
  • History of robotics
  • Timeline of Robotics
  • History of the Slovak robotics
  • History of the Robotics at the STU
  • The lecture presentation is not here due to the copyright issues
  

• Lecture Kinematics of mobile robots.
  Assoc. prof. Ing. Peter Hubinský, PhD. (FEI STU, Slovakia)
  Basic types of the mobile robot kinematics - differential drive, tricycle, Ackermann steering, omnidirectional wheels, synchronous drives - basic structures, coordinate transformations, technical solutions.
  • Download the presentation
  • Live demonstrations (by PhD. students Ing. František Duchoň and Ing. Marian Kžúčik)
  More photos...

• Excursion, Thursday, 3rd. of July:
  We visited the MicroStep-MIS and ME-inspection companies.

  More photos...

• Lecture Data fusion, context awareness and fault detection in autonomous robotics.
  Assoc. Prof. Anton Vitko, PhD. (FEI STU, Slovakia)
  A brief survey of the main approaches to the data fusion for purposes of both the reactive navigation in an unknown terrain and fault detection. Main points:
  • What is data fusion and why the data should be fused?
  • What is a context?
  • Fusion hierarchy
  • Means of data fusion
  • Using fused information for detection, clustering and classification of an abnormal motion of the robot's leg

  • Download the presentation
  

• Lecture Selected topics from Evolutionary Algorithms I
  Mgr. Pavel Petrovič, PhD. (FMFI Comenius University, Slovakia)
  Evolutionary Algorithms are stochastic search and optimisation algorithms. Various flavours of the algorithms are known. We will shortly review the basic methods and discuss the more advanced approaches including probabilistic representations of populations, multi-objective evolutionary optimisation, representation issues, and evolution of recurrent neural networks.
  • Download the presentation
  • Further reading: ToDO
  

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  weekend

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• Lecture and workshop Sensors for Robots and their C-programming for PIC.
  Dipl.-Ing. Adrian Dabrowski (HTL Spengergasse, Austria)
  A sensor workshop for mobile robots - presentation of a ultrasonic sensor, a CMUCam, GPS, IR, and some others.
  • Download the presentation
  

• Tutorial How to follow a ping-pong ball
  RNDr. Andrej Lúčny, PhD. (MicroStep-MIS, Slovakia)
  We introduce step-by-step necessary methods of image processing and behaviour control for development of a simple robot which follows a ping-pong ball. In this way we demonstrate several important principles on a simple example.
  • Download the presentation
  

• Roboat Excursion at the lake Neusiedler (Austria)
  Come with us to see the best autonomous sailboat in action.
  • Roboat.at
  • InnoC.at
  • Yachtclub Breitenbrunn
  See the PhotoGallery.

• Basics of DSP on AVR processors (hands-on tutorial).
  Prof. Dipl.-Phys. Gerhard Gruhler, Dipl. Ing. Peter Haeuptle (Hochschule Heilbronn, Germany)
  Date: 9. - 10. 7. 2008
  • Download the DSP presentation
  • Download the MiniMEXLE presentation
  

• Workshop Low-level programming of NXT robots.
  Mgr. Pavel Petrovič, PhD. (FMFI Comenius University, Slovakia)
  The popular robotics construction sets - LEGO Mindstorms NXT can be programmed using the standard programming environment RoboLab, and many other 3rd party programming environments, such as NBC, NXC, RobotC, Lejos, and other. In this workshop, we will learn how to program the robots directly in C, i.e. how to write a firmware for the NXT brick.
  • Download the presentation
  More photos...

• Lecture Selected topics from Evolutionary Algorithms II
  Mgr. Pavel Petrovič, PhD. (FMFI Comenius university, Slovakia)
  Evolutionary Algorithms are stochastic search and optimisation algorithms. Various flavours of the algorithms are known. We will shortly review the basic methods and discuss the more advanced approaches including probabilistic representations of populations, multi-objective evolutionary optimisation, representation issues, and evolution of recurrent neural networks.
  • Download the presentation

• Lecture Subsumption: Brooks' approach to robotics
  RNDr. Andrej Lúčny, PhD. (MicroStep-MIS, Slovakia)
  We introduce subsumption as simplified method how to mimics biological evolution for purposes of robot construction. Features of biological creatures as their situatedness in particular environment and thinkering (bricolage) during their evolution are used as important inspiration.
  • Download the presentation

• Lecture Bayesian Robot Programming and Probabilistic Robotics.
  Mgr. Pavel Petrovič, PhD. (FMFI Comenius University, Slovakia
  The information about the robot environment acquired from robot sensors is uncertain, ambiguous and noisy. To cope with this kind of information, probabilistic modeling of the world is appropriate. The parameters of the probabilistic distributions can be obtained by learning from experimental data. This tutorial will introduce basic concepts used in probabilistic robotics and demonstrate them on practical examples.
  • Download the presentation

• Workshop Basic operation with a Boe-Bot mobile robot.
  Ing. Richard Balogh (Robotika.SK)

  More photos...

  " Interesting and easy way to start working on a mobile robot. "
  Participant

  " This workshop I think was the best part of this course. "
  Participant

Galleries

more images...

1. BEST photos
2. Here is place for Your contribution...

Archive

• Robotic holidays 2007
• Robotic holidays 2006
• Robotic holidays 2005
• Robotic holidays 2004

Registration

Registration is closed.

Information

• When?

  28 June to 12 July 2008

• Where?

  At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia. Exact address: Ilkovičova 3, 812 19 Bratislava, Slovakia. The rooms are shown in the timetable.

• Who?

  Anybody interested. No age limitations.

• How many people?

  Awaited were cca 10 - 15 persons, in fact participated more than 20, some lectures visited more than 30 people.

• How much?

  Thanks to the sponsors the lectures are free of charge, but You have to pay for accomodation and food, respectively.

• Where to ask questions?

  Use an e-mail to organisers.

Contact

richard.balogh [at] robotika.sk

Sponsors and partners