Recalibrating the first location of the tour after what had looked like a promising position to place the robot turned out to be a fountain. This is one example of the small matters that have to be checked on location during integration sessions. The location was pinpointed for use by researchers from the Netherlands on a map generated by the researchers from Seville. The map was good enough to show a feature – local knowledge was required to know what the feature was. And the correction took only seconds once a perfect spot had been chosen.
Next week the FROG robot will be back in Seville to test the new StateMachine, autonomous missions and the docking sequence for recharging the batteries between missions. There will be some playful content for the demo runs and the researchers will be collecting more material for expanding this to a full tour for the Final Event to be held in September 2014.
Last week the FROG robot appeared in all its glory – green at last – at the Royal Alcázar in Seville. We had a very successful integration and data collection meeting and ran user experiments and observation sessions with multimodal presentations on the robot. The aim of this project is to make a fun robot to augment the grand work done by human tour guides at heritage sites and zoos.
In September we will hold presentations and demonstrations about the project to an invited audience and we hope to have a lot of feedback from the tour guides as to how a robot could someday become their new colleague. Ask not, what can you do for the robot, but, what can the robot do for you?
FROG and baby-FROG (a customized MAGABOT platform) during a film session for Spanish television on 26 February 2014.
The report was aired for the first time on 4 March 2014 on Andalusía regional TV, Canal Surand later shown on other channels. You can find it here: FROG on TV.
FROG and baby-FROG (a customized MAGABOT platform) were at the Royal Alcázar in Seville from 24-28 February for integration work and tests. The Royal Alcázar is a wonderful place to visit. The palace is beautiful but leave time to wander in the well-tended gardens!
FROG is on its way to Seville for the next Integration meeting at the Real Alcázar. The UPO team will make a final map of the Real Alcázar route in preparation for the arrival of the other partners on 24 February 2014.
What do you do when you need to run outdoor tests with a robot platform without a shell as was the case in October 2013 in the Lisbon Zoo? Well, you can either pack it in plastic sheeting fixed with sticky back plastic, or you can be a gentleman and be ready with an umbrella.
On our way to Lisbon for a second round of experiments before the demo in November. We will perform several navigation experiments with the final FROG robot platform these days. Van ready, here we go!
