TechTheFire
That's my first autonomous robot.
And it bested 2/3 of the 2014 French robotic Cup competitors.
When I entered engineering school, the INTech club made me discover the world of robotics. My team and I made our first autonomous robot here. Our robot had to compete against other robots from other teams during 90s on its own. The project required a wide range of skills: mechanical conception, electronics, software design, etc.
I was the lead software engineer for this project, implementing algorithms like pathfinding (HPA*) and artificial intelligence (adversarial research based on a minimax derivative).
It has its own ideas.
Mini-max algorithm in real time !
The embedded Raspberry Pi carries a lot of processing power, which is why it was running the robot's AI. Within the first ten seconds of the 90s match, the AI I made could compute how to reach the maximum score given the enemy’s behavior. This calculation is constantly updated so our robot never behaves in a suboptimal manner.
The main area for improving further the behavior of the robot would be to increase its situational awareness. The location of the enemy robot(s) was only known is we're in their very close vicinity.
A showcase of STEM for children
De-mystifying robotics in simple words
Robotics is often seen as a complicated black box by non-experts. However, the basics are within reach of everyone with a basic understanding of STEM. This is why INTech tries to make robotics accessible and attractive. In particular, we presented our robot to a school, where 12 years-old children were quite interested. That day gave us the opportunity to explain in simple words how a robot operates, and maybe trigger some inspirations.
Putting our robot in a school also stresses our prototype in a different manner than competition would. Fortunately, everything went well.
