The UPO research team has made a mockup of the space where the FROG will go to recharge. UPO is finalizing their implemention of the docking sequence.
After testing, the docking station will be placed in the shop near the entrance of the Royal Alcazar. This will be the FROG’s base for all of next week. When it is running low on power, the robot will return to the shop, align itself to the docking station and drive on to recharge its batteries.
This lab has a view of the Tennis Courtyard of the Royal Alcazar and the tower of the cathedral.
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.
protoFROG is actually the UT Campus robot. It is a prototype of the FROG robot with demos of some of the functionalities that are being developed in the FROG project.
The protoFROG will be at the Hannover Messe on the stand from Monday 7 April to Wednesday 9 April.
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.
