Welcome to the STRANDS Summer School on “Long-term Autonomy for Mobile Robots” (LAMoR)

Participant Information¶

Make sure you read the general information for participants about accommodation, travel, etc.

For online help

Map¶

[[Individual Computer Setup]]¶

Make sure you accomplish the setup detailed on the “[[Individual Computer Setup]]” page prior to coming to Lincoln.

As we’ll be working in teams, it is recommended to have a github.com account. This will help you to obtain the tutorial material and to collaborate with your team.

[[Working with the STRANDS robots]]¶

Programme¶

The school’s programme is composed of morning research presentations by leading academics in their fields, followed by hands-on programming tutorials to get to know the software components being used to program the robots. The afternoons are dedicated to programming in teams to solve tasks on the robot during the course of the summer school. In these teams of 6-7 you will be working with one of four mobile Scitos G5 platform, equipped with two Kinect sensors, SICK Laser Scanner, Touch screen, pan-tilt camera, speakers, microphone, an actuated head for human-robot interaction, and a differential drive to go about.

You will be working together in the team to implement one of a number of [[possible tasks]] (in C++ or Python), cumulating in the opportunity to present your achievements and yourself to the participants of the ECMR conference during a dedicated poster and demonstration session at the ECMR welcome reception.

Day 1 - 27/8: Mapping and Navigation¶

Learning Objectives for the day:

Understanding basics and creation of metric and topological mapping
Get to know the challenges and solution of 4D (i.e. temporal) mapping
Navigate in those maps
Understand, create, and visualise “meta rooms” to perceive the dynamic environment

Lecture materials 1: Part 1, Part 2
[[Tutorial materials 1]]
Social event: Pub quiz at the tower bars starting at 18.00. If you want to eat there as well, please arrive around 17.30 as their kitchen will close at 18.00.

Day 2 - 28/8: Scheduling and Execution¶

Learning Objectives for the day:

schedule task
creating routines

Lecture materials 2
Tutorial materials 2
Social event: Football, badminton, and table tennis at the sports centre starting from 19.00. Please dress to the occasion.

Day 3 - 29/8: Computer Vision¶

Learning Objectives for the day:

Modelling 3D objects
Modelling object recogniser performance
Searching for objects in the environment

Lecture materials 3
[[Tutorial materials 3]]
Social event: Social dinner at the Wig & Mitre starting 19.00. The distance might seem short but includes a rather steep hill, please allow some extra time for that.

Day 4 - 30/8: People tracking and Activities¶

Learning Objectives for the day:

using and customising the people tracker
using the qsr_lib to generate QSRs of arbitrary objects offline
adding a new QSR to the qsr_lib
understanding QTC and writing an online qtc creator for robot and a human

Hacking tasks:
creating a node that generates QRSs between people, or objects
creating your own QSR in the lbrary
Lecture materials 4
[[Tutorial materials 4]]
Social event: Self organised night out to explore the city’s night life.

Day 5 - 31/8: Sightseeing, Hacking, and Demonstration¶

Morning opportunity to go sightseeing
Afternoon, finalising implementation of tasks in teams
around 16:00, demonstration by groups of achievements

(Day 6 - 1/9: Free)¶

Participants not staying on for ECMR to depart

(Day 7 - 2/9: First day of ECMR)¶

17:30 ECMR welcome reception with robot demonstrations and posters from LAMoR teams.