Preparing for the Cloud Robotics Hackathon

[jfheon]

Greetings,

I recently learned about the Cloud Robotics Hackathon, and I'm trying to find out if my project idea is somewhat feasible. I'm an experienced programmer, but I am completely new to robotics and do not own a robot. So far I have registered for a MyRobots account and have registered my home computer as a robot (Stonehenge.) So far so good.

I would like to have a group of robots to communicate via MyRobots to react to one another a bit as if the were in the same room and had sensors and some way to track their relative position, orientation and speed.

I'm having problem grokking if such a thing is possible with the MyRobots API. Could I have a robot app receiving all the tracking info from the group of robots and dispatching between them? Or could one of the robot be a home computer "robot" to handle the information tracking and dispatching?

Or maybe one of the robot could have its program being subscribed to the other robot info, coordinate the information and to the dispatch. Or maybe each robot could broadcast its information to all the other robots.

To summarize the key points:
-Having some way to have a bunch of robot be part of the same group on MyRobots to communicate between themselves.
-Having some way to send position, orientation & speed information to the whole group (with relative virtual position) or to "head robot" or a desktop computer "robot" to determine which information to send to which robot.
-I forgot my third point

Please point me to any relevant documentation that I probably missed.

Thank you kindly

[Casmat]

Your application is possible, but you will need a way of measuring the robot's positions. You might be able to do this using a camera or a Kinect.

A central computer could measure their positions and send them their current location and their desired location on their individual channels.

If you want to coordinate multiple robots, you will need to... well... get many of them. Remember that if you register your idea before Feb 18th, you will get a free DFRobotShop Rover for your team.

The MyRobot API has several general purpose fields that you can use to send data to the robots and location fields that you can use to communicate their locations.

Finally, don't be afraid of getting started in robotics, If you know how to program in general and have a bit of common sense, you can be programming robots in no time.

See you at the Hackathon!

[jfheon]

Thank you for your help Carlos!

We just registered for the hackathon, although we'll be trying a simpler project 8)

[jorgea]

Let us all know how you do in the Hackathon here