December 17, 2015

• Found this nice introduction lecture to AI and Robotics from New York City College with some links to historical movies I hadn't seen.
• Found a location where a inspection copy could be requested of Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics.
• Matlab2015a is installed on nb-ros.
• Looking at the modules of the robot Spencer (navigating at Schiphol). I found a github of the project, but not the path-planning module (which seems to be rtt-based).

November 25, 2015

• Was able to derive the Bayesian formula using the Recursive Bayesian rule. The conditioning Bayesian rule (eq. 2.16 page 17) could also be directly applied. Not sure how the conditioning Bayesian rule could be derived from eq 2.9 and 2.13.
• Found a download site with the chapters from edition 1 of AMR. This is including a Java homework assignment.
• Tried imaqhwinfo on my workstation u023297, but no Adaptors installed:
  InstalledAdaptors: {}
  MATLABVersion: '8.4 (R2014b)'
  ToolboxName: 'Image Acquisition Toolbox'
  ToolboxVersion: '4.8 (R2014b)'
  
• Tried imaqhwinfo on my Windows laptop:
  InstalledAdaptors: {'gentl' 'gige' 'matrox' 'winvideo'}
  MATLABVersion: '8.0 (R2012b)'
  ToolboxName: 'Image Acquisition Toolbox'
  ToolboxVersion: '4.4 (R2012b)'
  

December 2, 2015

• Used the Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000, which worked fine on my windows systems with Matlab R2012b and the Image Acquistition Toolbox imaqtool. The QuickCam became visible after Tools->Refresh Hardware.
• The confusion matrix between training vs training is not symmetric when the probability is calculated with the reference image (instead of the longest distance).

December 1, 2015

• Asked the laptop helpdesk to solve my license problem with Matlab, but their hypothesis was that certificate was not associated with my university account (which could be truth, that I used my RoboCup account).

November 30, 2015

• The localisation assignment asks to fuse the information from the linefinder with the colorblobs, but in the dataset no coloured landmarks are provided. Checked the solution from 2014, but only Jordy Perlee and Yanick van Langeraad talk about colours (no dataset). I will check the SLAM-dataset.

November 23, 2015

• Stef Baas asked for the reason of the delta theta / 2 in page 270 (equation 5.2).
• Eelco asked for the derivation of the Bayesian formula at the start of exercise3.
• The students have problems with accessing the camera. Last year I worked on InitCamera.m (assignment4), but now I have problems with starting up matlab. Is the license no longer valid? The R2014b.lic indicates that it issued on 27-Oct-2014, and incremented on 01-feb-2015.
• Followed the instructions from datanose, but couldn't find the "Add License" button. Downloaded R2015b.
• Moved the package to tmp, and started the install_unix script. Have to login to MathWorks to activate. Will do that later.

October 27, 2015

• Read Chapter 3 (Numerical Methods) of the book: Mobile Robotics Mathematics, Models, and Methods. This book seems to be more appropriate for Probabilistic Robotics course. For instance, it explains the use of pseudo-inverses for Jacobians. Read it until page 44. Skipped the Integration of Differential Equations (Euler method versus Runge Kutta).

October 26, 2015

• The book: Mobile Robotics Mathematics, Models, and Methods is directly accessable from the uva-domain: doi:10.1017/CBO9781139381284.
• Read Chapter 1 of the book: Mobile Robotics Mathematics, Models, and Methods. This chapter gives a short introduction on what a robot is (just a single paragraph about service robots). Alonzo Kelly doesn't need many words. Just one knowledge question added to this chapter.
• Chapter 2 (Math Fundamentals) has much more content than chapter 1 (105 pages).
  " We also need notations powerful enough to handle many concepts from dynamics rather than just homogeneous coordinates applied to points and vectors in space.
  For these reasons, we will depart from the conventions of many other robotics books and use the notations of physics rather than those of computer graphics. ".
  A must read after section 2.1 is Mathematical Notation: Past and Future by Stephen Wolfram.
• Alonzo is also rather short in chapter 2: one paragraph for the inner product and one for the outer product. Read the chapter until section 2.2.5 (page 29). The chapter ends with integration of quaternions.

October 22, 2015

• Found a book from 2014 with a lot of math: Mobile Robotics Mathematics, Models, and Methods. Unfortunatelly, no inspection copies.
• Found the 2nd edtion from 2010 about Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics. Unfortunatelly, no inspection copies, and the electronic version is no longer available for purchase.

Previous Labbooks

• Labbook2014.html
• Labbook2013.html
• Labbook2012.html
• Probabilistic Robotics 2012
• Labbook2010.html
• Labbook2009.html
• Labbook2008.html
• Labbook2007.html