Computer Engineering Department

Robotics Laboratory

                                                   Watch the Robocup 2007 Germany-Japan Game

Group of Interest on Robocup (GIR)

RoboCup is an international joint project to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem. The ultimate goal of RoboCup is to develop by 2050 a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer. This idea will promote advancing human knowledge about autonomous robotics and will culminate by an intelligent robot that will assist human in many aspect of life. The educational approach is estimated to be one of the most effective because it teaches sophisticated robotic intelligence design through the programming of a robotic game, e.g. teaching by playing.

Group Targets (Senior Design projects and Master theses):

• Develop an awareness of Autonomous Robotics emphasized by ROBOCUP Competition.
• Develop techniques for distributed Intelligence using humanoid robots
• Design of a Humanoid Robot Behavior Programm for Player Soccer.
• Design of a library of motion functions for a humanoid robot for Soccer game.
• Design of Monte-Carlo Self-Localization Algorithm for Humanoid Robot Playing Soccer.
• Multi-Robot Cooperation: Design and Evaluation of a Reliable P2P Communication Protocol for IEEE 802.11b Networks
• Develop a platform for Robocup including Motion, Vision, and Distributed Intelligence Techniques

Who are the members of the GIR

Any individual (faculty, students, engineer or other) who is interested in Robocup and willing to participate and contribute to it

How to become a member of the GIR

Send email to Prof. Mayez Al-Mouhamed at mayez@ccse.kfupm.edu.sa expressing your intention to participate and contribute to GIR.

How the GIR is working

• Meeting are regularly organized for the GIR members
• The meeting presents a platform for discussing progress made and coordinate task distribution among the members.

Project Description

Project-1: Design of a library of motion functions for a humanoid robot for Soccer game.

• Background:   Humanoid robots are enjoying increasing popularity as a research tool and education tool. The ultimate goal of the international RoboCup Initiative is to build a humanoid soccer team which beats a human World Cup Champion team in 2050. Despite impressive achievements of some teams, the overall performance of the soccer playing humanoids is still far from perfect. The robots sometimes show instability while walking, fails to kick the ball or defend against shots not taken. In this project a geometrical model for the walking legs of the Kondo KHR-1 humanoid robot is developed. The model allows establishing the relationships between a set of function walking motion controls and that of the leg controlled angles. Furthermore, the project used the German team SimRobot to program the soccer scene and for the analysis of Kondo walking motion.  A 3D model as part of the SimRobot controller has been develped. A set of synthesized walking motions were designed. The result is a library of motions which are: 1) Walking Forward 2) Walking Backwards 3) Step right/left 4) Turn right/left 5) Swat right/left 6) Kick right/left 7) Bow 8) Push-ups. The library is useful to facilitate soccer behavior programming for preparing the students to the RoboCup competition.

   

  The Kondo KHR-1 is humanoid robot having 19 degrees of freedom (dof)  in its legs (each is 6), arms (each is 3), and head (one). The Kondo has a micro-controller allowing the servo control of all of its 19 dofs. The Kondo Controller has a Serial Interface (RS232C) with a PC from where a user interface is provided. The Kondo is provided with a user interface (heart-to-heart or HTH) allowing programming the configuration of all of its 19 dofs by setting the value of the motor angles in a specific table, then it allows sending the values to the Kondo using the above serial communication. The HTH carries out serial communication based on a USB port with the Kondo using some unknown protocol. To control the walking motion of Kondo during a soccer game we need a program (robocup behavior programming) to command the walking/kicking for the Kondo.

   

• Description: designing of a library of motion functions allowing the Kondo to walk using its left and right legs, moving forward and backward, turning its body while walking, and kicking a ball towards the goal. The tasks are:

1. Step-1: Review the Kondo mechanics, assembly, user manual, and get familiar with the provided servo interface (described above).

 

2. Step-1: can program a specific motion by sequencing (time) a series of angle configurations that are required to generate desired motion. Identify the communication functions between HTH and Kondo and develop a program to carry out the above communication.

 

3. Step-3:  Program a library of motion functions allowing the Kondo to (1) walk using its left and right legs, (2) moving forward and backward, (3) turning its body while walking, and (4) kicking a ball towards the goal. It is clear that some variant of the above might be needed.

 

4. Step-4: Testing the above a library of motion functions and tuning of the above functions to improve performance. Some evaluation is also needed regarding the duration of each motion and its reliability.

 

Outcomes:  project completed by Student Ahmad Abu-Arafah in 2009

• RoboCup: library of motion functions for a humanoid robot.
  • See motion video-clips 
  • AICCSA'10 Conference Paper

Project-2 (Master Thesis in Computer Engineering):  Design and Evaluation of a Reliable P2P Communication Protocol for IEEE 802.11b Networks

Project-3 (Senior Design Project COE 485):  Design of a Humanoid Robot Behavior Programm for Player Soccer.

• Description:  In the RoboCup Humanoid League, humanoid soccer robots have a humanlike body plan to compete with each other. The robots must have two legs, two arms, a head, and a trunk. The fully autonomous humanoid robots must be able to walk on two legs. The project is on the design and implementation of the Behavior Programming (BP) for a humanoid robot for player soccer. The behavior control software is based on a framework that supports a hierarchy of reactive behaviors. It is structured both as an agent hierarchy (joint – body part – player – team) and as a time hierarchy. The speed of sensors, behaviors, and actuators decreases when moving up in the hierarchy. The lowest levels of this framework contain position control of individual joints and kinematic interfaces for body parts. At the next level, basic skills like omni-directional walking, kicking, and getting-up behaviors are implemented. The BP is to be written in any programming language. The design will inspire from current RoboCup competitions for the level of intelligence needed. BP will be tested testing against a pre-defined set of scenarios.  The results can be integrated with the above project for building a KFUPM Humanoid soccer Robot.

Pre-requisite: Be interested in RoboCup and robotics + Experience with C or Java programming.

Project-3 (Senior Design Project COE 485):  Design of Monte-Carlo Self-Localization Algorithm for Humanoid Robot Playing Soccer.

• Description: The objective of the robot vision system (VS) is to be able to self-localize (SL) the robot within the soccer field. For this VS must first be able to detect a number of percepts, each characterize one specific features of the soccer field. These features are the field lines and field circle, the beacons on the edges of the field, the other robots playing which appear in the field, the opponent goal and its own goal. Each vision percept is specialized in the detection of one of above features. to optimize the search without visiting all pixel in the image, we need to invoke the specific percept-procedure based on early detection of a color of a shape. Thus the image scanning strategy consists of identifying the robot horizon line because all objects are located below the above line. Pruning of the image area is also done by identifying the horizon line and limit the search only to the area below the horizon line. Each VS phase will be able to detect a subset of features. Now the project is to develop a Monte-Carlo Self-Localization (MCSL) Algorithm which allows identifying the position of the robot within the scene.   MCSL is aprobabilistic approach that uses the information for the above perceptors and a vision model of the scene to estimate the closest robot pose, e.g. the robot position within the soccer field.  The project can be implemented on a PC with a camera and a soccer field meeting the RobCup specification. Testing will be carried out by placing the camera in known field locations and checking the estimation provided by the perceptor and the MCSL algorithm.

Pre-requisite: Be interested in RoboCup and robotics + Experience with C or Java programming.

Project-4 (Senior Design Project COE 485):  Developing an embedded computing system (ECS) for Vision and Behavior Programming for Robocup.

• Background:  developing a platform integrating an embedded computing system (ECS) with a color camera to be attached on the Kondo KHR-1 humanoid. The ECS must have a high level programming tool allowing developing user programs and downloading on the ECS. In addition, the ECS must be capable of grabbing no less that 10 frame per second. The ECS must have some processing capability making it possible to embed the Vision System and the Robocup Behavior Programming and them concurrently with a decent refreshing rate of no less than 5 iterations per second. The Kondo KHR-1 is humanoid robot having 19 degrees of freedom which are controlled using a micro-controller allowing the servo control of all of its 19 dofs. The Kondo Controller has a Serial Interface (RS232C) with a PC from where a user interface (heart-to-heart or HTH) is provided. HTH allows programming the configuration of all of its 19 dofs by setting the value of the motor angles in a specific table, then it allows sending the values to the Kondo using the above serial communication. The HTH carries out serial communication based on a USB port with the Kondo using some unknown protocol. The ECS must be able to communicate with Kondo using Kondo communication protocol (HTH) which is to be found in Task-1.

• Description: Developing an embedded computing system (ECS) for Vision and Behavior Programming for Robocup:

1. Step-1: Review some well known ECS and test their ability to communicate with a Laptop (preferably using wireless communication for downloading programs) and interfacing with the Kondo KHR-1 as to emulate the motion generation which is currently done using the Heart-to-heart interface.

2. Step-2:  Evaluate the selected ECS and to test its ability to grab images from some low resolution miniature cameras. Examine the overall power consumption of the ECS under heavy video grabbing.  Determine the video frame rate and the available computing power of the ECS vs grabbing tasks because the ECS will be intended to be used for vision processing and behavior programming. For this its available computing power is very important in the selection of the solution ECS.

3. Step-3:  Program a simple image grabbing and ball detection so that a motion command can be generated to the kondo. The command is to have the kondo walking toward the detected ball facing the goal and carry out a ball kicking.

4. Step-4:  Examine embedding the ECS on the Kondo with its own power supplies and testing its ability to carry out the task described above.

 

Pre-requisite: Be interested in RoboCup and robotics + Experience with C or Java programming.

Awards Received for Contributions in Robotics

• Quoted by the Saudi Arabian Newspaper AL-WATAN regarding his achievements in the Design of the First Saudi Robotic System, No 2370, 27 March, 2007
• Recipient of the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KCST) Certificate of Distinguished Research Project, First Degree, Golden, awarded to KACST project AT-20-80 titled "Design of an Intelligent Telerobotic System" (with Dr. Onur Toker (SE) and Dr. Nesar Merah (ME)),  K.S.A., December 2006.
• Recipient of the “College of Computer Science and Engineering Excellence Award in Student Project”, KFUPM, Dhahran 31261, K.S.A., June 2006.
• Recipient of the “College of Computer Science and Engineering Excellence Award in Muti-Disciplinary Research”, KFUPM, Dhahran 31261, K.S.A., June 2003.

Research outcomes in the area of Robotics:

Journal Publications in Robotics:

1. Mayez Al-Mouhamed, An Effcient Indexing Scheme For Image Storage and Recognition, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 46, No. 2, April 1999. pp. 429-439.
2. Mayez Al-Mouhamed, A Robust Gross-to-Fine Pattern Recognition System, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 48, No 6, December, 2001. pp. 1226-1237.
3. Mayez Al-Mouhamed, Onur Toker, and Abdul-Khalik Al-Harthy, “A 3D Vision-Based Man-Machine Interface For Hand-Controlled Telerobot”, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics,  Vol 52, No 1, 2005, pp. 306-319.
4. Mayez A. Al-Mouhamed, Onur Toker, and Asif Iqbal, A Multi-Threaded Distributed Telerobotic Framework, IEEE T.on Mechatronics, Vol 11, No 5, Oct., 2006. pp. 558-566.
5. Mayez A. Al-Mouhamed, Mohammad Nazeeruddin, and Nesar Merah,  Design and Analysis of Force Feedback in Telerobotics, IEEE Trans. on Instrumentation and Measurements, Vol 58, No 6, 2009, pp.1949-1957.  
6. Mayez A. Al-Mouhamed, Mohammad Nazeeruddin, and Syed M.S. Islam, Experimental Evaluation of Feedback Modalities for Five Teleoperation Tasks, IEEE Trans. on Instrumentation and Measurements, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2010, pp. 361-371.

Conference Publications in Robotics:

1. Mayez Al-Mouhamed, Onur Toker, Asif Iqbal, and M. Nazeeruddin, A Distributed Framework for Relaying Stereo Vision for Telerobotics, IEEE Inter. Conference on Pervasive Services, Beirut, Lebanon, July 19-23, 2004, pp. 221-225.
2. M. Al-Mouhamed, M. Nazeeruddin, and A. Iqbal, A Modular Distributed Telerobotic Client-Server System, Inter. Conference on Information and Computer Science (ICICS’04), KFUPM, Dhahran, KSA, Nov, 28-30, 2004,
3. Mayez A. Al-Mouhamed, Onur Toker, Asif Iqbal, and Syed M.S. Islam, Evaluation of Real-Time Delays for Networked Telerobotics, 3^rd Inter. IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN’05), 10-12 August 2005, Perth, Western Australia, pp. 351-356.
4. Mayez A. Al-Mouhamed, Mohammad Nazeeruddin, and Syed M.S. Islam, Evaluation of Assembly Tasks in Augmented Telerobotics, 2nd International AUS Symposium on Mechatronics (AUS-ISM05), April 19-21, 2005, Sharjah, UAE.
5. Al-Mouhamed, M., Buhari, S.M., Nazeeruddin, M., Islam, S.M.S., “Qualitative Evaluation of Computer-Aided Teleopearation”, In Proc. of the 4th ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA-06), March 8-11, 2006, Dubai,Sharjah, UAE.
6. M. A. Al-Mouhamed, M. Nazeeruddin, and N. Merah, Design and Analysis of Force Feedback in Telerobotics, 3rd International AUS Symposium on Mechatronics, April 18-20, 2006, Sharjah, UAE.
7. Syed M.S. Islam, M. Al-Mouhamed, S.M. Buhari, and Talal Al-Kharoubi, “A Hierarchical Design Scheme for Application of Augmented Reality in a Telerobotic Stereo-Vision System”, the Saudi 18^th National Computer Conference (NCC18), March 26-29, 2006. Riyadh, KSA.
8. Islam, Syed M.S., Al-Mouhamed, M.A., Al-Kharobi, T. and Buhari, S.M. “Augmentation of a Telerobotic Stereo-Vision System Using Graphical Overlays,” Proc. of the First International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (IIS), Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, August 8-11, 2006. (accepted for oral presentation).
9. M. A. Al-Mouhamed, M. Nazeeruddin, and N. Merah, Force-Based Compliant Behaviors to Augment Telerobotics, 4th International AUS Symposium on Mechatronics, March 26-29, 2007, Sharjah, UAE.
10. M. Al-Mouhamed and U. F. Siddiqi, Performance Evaluation of Auctions WLAN for RoboCup Multi-Robot Cooperation, The 7th ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA-2009), 10-13 May 2009, Page(s):610 – 615.
11. M. Al-Mouhamed and A. Abu-Arafah, Design of a Library of Motion Functions for a Humanoid Robot for a Football Game, The 8th ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA-2010), 2010, Page(s):1– 6.

12. M. A. Al-Mouhamed, I. A. Khan, and S. N. Firdous, A Reliable Peer-to-Peer Protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks, submitted to the 9th ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA-2011), 2011.