Robotic Games
From MARHES
The Robotic Games project is focused on encouraging children's interest in science and engineering by developing a set of interactive games that introduce them to the basics of robotics in a fun-filled afternoon demonstration.
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Project Description
In the United States today, interest among children in science and engineering is slowly dwindling. If this trend continues, scientific innovation and expansion in the country will be dramatically reduced. In order to help alleviate these problems, this project will develop a set of games that allow groups of school children to interact with a robot in an informative and interesting afternoon demonstration. This will help the children to see that science and engineering can be fun and will encourage them to consider engineering as they begin thinking about careers later.
Target Audience
Research conducted by various engineering schools and firms shows that the undergraduate enrollment in engineering has been dropping steadily since the 1950s. This problem is especially prevalent in under-represented groups. One of the cultural groups with the very lowest engineering enrollment is Native Americans. For this reason, the team intends to focus our efforts on developing games that will be interesting and appealing for Native American children of both sexes between the ages of six and ten..
Robotic Platform
The platform for this project is the Evolution Robotics Scorpion robot. This platform was chosen because it provides designers with a set of advanced robotic behaviors which can be combined and augmented to develop game modules. Furthermore, these behaviors have already been configured to work with the Scorpion robot. This will allow the team to focus our time and effort on developing interactive high level gaming behaviors and exploring some of the social aspects of this problem.
Current Work
Currently the team is working on improvements to the games discussed below which were developed last semester as part of a Senior Design project. The system architecture is also being extended. The next demonstration of these games is scheduled during OSU research week February 20-24, 2006.
Marco Polo
This game is a robotic version of the traditional Marco Polo game that is often played by children in swimming pools. The game makes use of two Scorpion robots. One of the robots is controlled using the joystick by a participating child. The other robot autonomously searches for the remote controlled robot. For information related to the game development process, click here.
Hide and Seek
Various objects of different shapes and sizes are saved within the robot's memory. The robot has been programmed to autonomously search the given area and behind all obstacles until it finds all the objects specified within its memory. The areas that have already been searched are saved in the robot's memory so that they are not revisited again. The first team whose robot finds all the objects will be declared the winner. For information related to the game development process, click here.
Search and Rescue Mission
Each robot is remotely driven by a participant using a joystick. The object o the game is to activate four beacons represented with a specific team color designation. The first team to activate all their beacons wins. One aspect of the game is that if the opposing team activates the other team's beacon then that counts for the opposing team. For information related to the game development process.
System Architecture
All of the games can be initialized and controlled using a common GUI and system architecture. This architecture will include the game server, a PDA for game referees, display nodes, and the robots. From the beginning of the project, the team has made system extensibility a primary focus. When evaluating various ideas and methods of implementing the robotic games, system extensibility and flexibility have been the main criteria applied. These criteria have dictated how communications are conducted among the various devices. The following block diagram shows a graphical representation of the system architecture that has been chosen. For more information about this architecture, click here.
Preliminary Results
Demonstrations
Initial game development and testing has been extremely successful. At the end of October 2005, a group of children were invited to the lab to try out a "scavenger hunt" game which was a cross between the Hide and Seek and Search and Rescue mission games. The object of the game was to use a remote computer terminal and joystick to drive the robots around the game area looking for various preprogrammed objects. About twenty-five children attended this event, providing the team with excellent feedback about which aspects of the games were the most enjoyable and educational for the kids. See the Robotic Games Media page for images and video from this event.
The Team
James McClintock
James McClintock is an Electrical Engineering senior also specializing in control systems. He has served as an undergraduate research assistant at the MARHES lab for the past two years. In addition to his major, James is earning minors in both math and computer science. He has strong programming skills in C++ and java.
Brent Perteet
Brent Perteet is a senior in Electrical Engineering who is specializing computers. He has served in as an undergraduate research assistant at the MARHES lab for the past nine months and is currently working on the engineering staff at Nomadics.
UNM Undergrad ECE Students
Lillian K. Acosta
Julie Welch
Tony Liu
Additional Links
External Game Documentation
Each link has a pdf file containing documentation and flowchart for the games and system architecture.
Marco Polo
Hide and seek
Search and Rescue
System Architecture
Reports
Sponsors
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CCR-0311460 and ECS-0348637.
