Trevor Taylor - Robotics Research

I have been working with robots for several years, and I have accumulated a large variety of robots, including two X80s, a Lego NXT, Hemisson, RoboSapien (V1 and RS Media), RoboRaptor, RobotPet, Scribbler, Boe-Bot, Surveyor SRV-1, Stinger CE and even a radio controlled Dalek and an autonomous R2D2! Robotics is not a research field, it is a lifestyle.

Introduction to Robotics

In 2006, we tried to put together a package of hardware and software for use in High Schools. This was based on the Sumovore robots from Solarbotics. These small robots have limited capabilities, but they can follow lines on the floor and can also compete against each other in "sumo wrestling".

Sumovores have an Atmel AtMega8 PIC as the on-board "brains". Although these controllers are slow (1 MHz) and have limited memory (8KB), they can be used to illustrate a variety of principles in robotics. As with most PICs on the market, the controller can be used for PWM control of the robot's wheels, and has a range of I/O functions including A/D converters and digital inputs and outputs. There is a UART in the PIC as well that could be used for serial communications, but this is not used in the current Sumovore design.

More recently I have been working with Robert Quaas from PicBlok on a new robot that he has developped for use in Queensland Schools and maybe even elsewhere in the world! This new model, called the Integrator, is featured in my book that will be out soon.

Dr. Robot X80

X80 robots are manufactured by Dr. Robot Inc. in Canada. In particular, X80s have a WiFi interface and a pan and tilt camera. This is important for my Computer Vision research.

I have developed an open source package for controlling X80s. The code is available in C++ and C#. This was necessary so that I could write a program to run a PDA for teleoperation of an X80 because the software supplied by Dr. Robot would not run on a PDA.

For more information, see my X80 WiRobot Page.

Microsoft Robotics Studio

In June 2006, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Robotics Studio. I worked with the beta versions (called Community Technology Previews) from the very first one, released in July 2006. MSRS was officially released in December 2006, and version 1.5 was released in July 2007. Work is currently underway on V2.0.

I have been actively participating in the Discussion Forum and contributing code since the very beginning, with the result that I am listed on the MSRS Community page.

So far I have released the following packages:

• Explorer Simulator;
• Maze Simulator;
• Updated Simulated Differential Drive;
• Enhanced version of the Simple Dashboard; and
• Simple Intro program to demonstrate basic exploration using the Simulator

I would like to acknowledge that Ben Axelrod was the initial author of the Maze Simulator. We have had many fruitful discussions about MSRS and I was fortunate to meet Ben at Georgia Tech when I visited Atlanta for the Robotics: Systems and Science conference and RoboCup 2007. He now works for CoroWare which is a MSRS Partner and sells a robot called the CoroBot.

Now that I have left QUT, my objective is to develop a suite of programs and corresponding web-based tutorials for teaching introductory robotics. The major constraint in the past has been time!

The first step in this process is a book that I have co-authored with Kyle Johns. "Professional Microsoft Robotics Studio", published by Wiley under the WROX brand, will be available in mid-2008. It contains a large number of new examples, including some great simulations that Kyle has written.

To download my previous code, see Microsoft Robotics Studio Code Page.