teaching robots to sing

[corivax]

Comments

[adularia]

Did it work right out of the box?

You may or may not already be aware that I love your writing.

[sistawendy]

So what's the damping like? If you stop driving it with the broom, how many periods does it go through before it stops oscillating (detectably)?

Having to deal with physics and imperfect mechanical or electro-mechanical components in my long-ago experience with a (pneumatic!) robot is what turned me off robotics. Not that there was much of that going on in my time & place anyway.

[corivax]

We're actually testing five different feedback routines with different characteristics - that's our actual research, with hypothesis and control and all those scientific trappings. :)

Some are optimized for damping, some for noise resistance, some to eliminate steady-state errors (which would likely continue indefinitely without friction to drag them out), etc - nobody's actually entirely sure which focus is best for this manuvering in zero-gravity. We aim to find out.

So, yeah, damping effectiveness actually varies a lot.

[vixyish]

Hey woah. I didn't know you were ever into robotics.

[sistawendy]

This was just one little project as part of an undergrad AI class, long ago in a state far away. I'm susceptible to the romance of it, though. I mean, aren't people meant for higher things than driving or picking bell peppers?

I think robotics will be the next killer app for the electronics industry if not the software industry. Most of the industry leaders are too focused on the short term to believe that yet, but they will.

[ayalanya]

whoa! *glee*

[ashley_y]

Couldn't you get it to undercompensate rather than overcompensate? Wouldn't that be less annoying?

[corivax]

It wouldn't be any less annoying, because this is a robot that operates in zero-gravity - there's not enough friction to damp steady-state errors.

However, when properly tuned (the process described here in remarkably unscientific terms) it neither overcompensates nor undercompensates. That's what tuning is for - adjusting the algorithm and the physical constraints until they line up.

[corivax]

It does still make mistakes, bump into walls, and the like, of course - it just doesn't systematically overcompensate or undercompensate.

[signsoflife]

Wouldn't you get Zeno's robot that way? Undercompensating in a frictionless environment, it would start moving to the left, fire thrusters left, continue moving left, fire thrusters left, continue moving left, fire thrusters left -- and never *quite* stop moving left, until it bangs a wall or the edge of the universe or runs out of fuel. At least overcompensation has the robot oscillating around an approximately set point.

(ObIAmNotAPhysicist)

[dilletante]

instead of sound, of course, it's actually bopping back and forth. :) most charming...