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Orlando Ball is the head of MIT's Mobile Robotics Lab, which was established to study a field robot that can adapt to the complex terrain and environment of aliens, such as participating in NASA's lunar or Mars expeditions. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

This time, they broke through the previous constraints of using remote control to control the robot and directly introduced the latest research results of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, which allows the "Edifier" to autonomously identify the terrain and choose to pass.

This time, Orlando and his brother Mark compete to see who is the first to cross a randomly arranged terrain with robots invented by both sides.

Both sides are very confident in their work.

When Orlando learned that Mark's robot was the seven or eight toy cars placed on the ground, he immediately felt that the other party was a little disrespectful to this competition, and took this competition as a child's play.

Before that, the "Life Survival Laboratory" and the "Mobile Robotics Laboratory" had gone through many battles, but the results of the battle made Orlando a little embarrassed, and the robots that their laboratories spent millions of dollars on research were not as good as the four-like monsters that Mark assembled with second-hand parts and equipment that they had abandoned.

Although Lin Hong also understood the basic operation principle of Mark's toy cars, he didn't understand what kind of medicine was sold in Mark's gourd, and he didn't understand why he was so confident in this competition. But intuitively, he felt that there must be something else he didn't understand.

The robot brought by Orlando shocked everyone greatly, and it was very sci-fi elements all over its body, both in terms of performance and appearance, it was better than Mark's toy car.

Arthur and Vina must have been faithfully on Orlando's side, feeling that Orlando would definitely emerge victorious this time.

"So, hurry up, it's not too early, we're done, and I still have to perform for my fans."

See the laptop in the hand of the Rambler. Mark also felt a little pressure, he didn't know what the hell the MIT maniacs had come up with. Although they are not very good at building machinery. But in terms of computers, it is really powerful, and it has always been at the forefront of the world.

But. Now it's all over the place. Worrying is also to no avail. Is it really as powerful as Orlando said, don't you know if you take it out and try it?

"Come on, dear!"

"Dad, come on!"

Vina and Arthur were on the side to cheer Orlando on, which made Mark a little depressed, knowing that he was also looking for a few cheerleaders to cheer on.

"Mark, all your toy cars are racing?"

Orlando couldn't help but ask when he saw Mark placing a total of eight toy cars on the starting line at the same time.

"Of course, is there any problem? The number had not been specified before. ”

"Declare in advance. You can't use the remote control, that's the rule! ”

"Of course. That's what I want to say to you. ”

Orlando saw that Mark seemed to be very confident, and looked back at the obstacles on the field, and in doubt, he walked to the center of the field and moved some of the obstacles again.

"You even suspect me of cheating!" Mark was disgruntled.

"For the sake of fairness, you know."

The two sides reiterated the rules of the game, and after the game started, neither of them was allowed to control the robot or the car, otherwise they would lose. Whoever gets through the obstacle first to the opposite side wins.

As before, Vina served as the referee.

After Mark and Orlando checked the machine for the last time, Vina blew the whistle.

The competition is officially on!

Mark's toy car due to its small size and light weight, start first, and at the same time run slowly towards the front, the speed is not fast, this is mainly due to the fact that the front may encounter obstacles, although the front and back of the car have been added with elastic anti-collision devices, but if the speed is too fast, the collision will still damage the car body.

The "Edifier" robot also began to start slowly, the crawler-like stepping mode walked very smoothly, and the sound of creaking gears was also very pleasant. It's not fast, as we all know, fast at the beginning doesn't mean anything, the most difficult part is that you will encounter obstacles along the way, and how to avoid these obstacles smoothly is the most important thing.

Lin Hong noticed that one of the eight cars quickly touched the first obstacle, and after hitting it slightly, the two cars next to him immediately made a chain action, one of them turned to the right, and the other began to turn to the left.

Lin Hong knew that this was the chip in the car that worked again. When the car collided with an obstacle, it immediately triggered its signal sending mechanism, and with the left and right swing of the sensor on its top, like other cars around it sent a command that there was an obstacle, so the other two cars received this instruction, and immediately executed the preset excitation action and immediately began to turn and avoid.

However, as these cars encountered obstacles, the mechanism began to become chaotic, and the eight or two cars completely lost their sense of direction and began to spin around the field, and one of them even turned around directly and returned to the original road, but when it was halfway through, it did not sense the continuous signal of the other cars, so it immediately turned around again and drove in the opposite direction.

It's also a simple judgment mechanism.

Lin Hong has seen the core code of these cars, and there is nothing profound, nothing more than three very simple conditions for erection.

If you encounter an obstacle, then notify the other trolleys to turn.

If you do not receive the synchronous connection signal of other cars within a certain period of time, then turn around and drive.

If you receive an obstacle signal from another car, then adjust your attitude after turning.

These are just three very simple if-then statements, which are the most common sentence patterns in programming, and there is nothing special about them.

Orlando's "Rambler" seemed to be very calm, as he slowly pushed forward, and when he was about to approach the first obstacle, he suddenly stopped, and his head began to turn.

"Dad, what is it doing?" Arthur, who had been following behind it, wondered.

"It's scanning the terrain." "In both of its eyes, there's a 2D lidar scanner that scans the terrain it sees into a computer, and then builds a model in the computer to figure out the path to take next." ”

"That's cool!"

Arthur walked to the side of the "Rambler" and tilted his head to look at the notebook monitor he was holding, and sure enough, a 3D model of the iron bucket in front of him appeared on the monitor, and in addition to that, models of other obstacles also appeared from left to right.

"It's so powerful!" Arthur exclaimed.

When Lin Hong heard this, he walked over to take a look, and was immediately stunned by the picture above.

It's too powerful to use a laser to create a 3D model of what is in front of it in a calculator!

How does this work?

Lin Hong's brain raced, thinking about possible ways to achieve it.

After thinking for a while, Lin Hong asked the first question:

"Uncle (uncle), lasers are generally point-shaped, such a rotation, at most one section can be scanned, how can the vertical direction of the picture also be scanned?"

Orlando glanced at Lin Hong with some surprise, a little surprised in his heart, he didn't expect him to ask a fairly high-level question so quickly.

He explains, "The output mode of that lidar laser has been changed from a single dot laser to a linear laser, so that the 3D image can be scanned by rotation. The scanner measures the reflection of this linear light on the object to be measured in order to obtain data for a scanned cross-section at a time. The advantage of this is that the scanning speed can be fast and the accuracy is relatively high. The disadvantage is that the laser becomes a line segment whose intensity will decay significantly with distance, so the ranging range is limited. For distance scanning at close range, such as less than 10 meters, it is enough to meet the demand. ”

Mark, who had run over immediately after hearing Arthur's exclamation, heard his words and his face was shocked.

"I didn't expect your school's artificial intelligence lab to really make something more interesting." He said.

"How does it measure distance?" Lin Hong asked the second question, "Is it through the reflection of the laser?" ”

"Yes." Orlande nodded, "Stone, you're a thoughtful child. ”

After complimenting Lin Hong, he continued:

"This is based on the principle of triangulation ranging based on lasers. The other eye of the Edifier is the camera, which is responsible for capturing the reflected laser, according to the principle of reflection, so that the laser, the camera and the object form an isosceles triangle, the height of the isosceles triangle is the distance between the object and the Wanderer, which can be easily calculated by the trigonometric formula. ”

As he explained, a picture gradually emerged in Lin Hong's mind, where the three components were abstracted into three points and formed a triangle. It was easy for him to understand the principle.

"Of course, this is the ideal situation." Orlando continues, "Now we're not in a completely dark environment with a lot of interfering light sources, such as incandescent lights overhead, that can interfere with the camera, so there's also light filtering and laser extraction algorithms, which are a bit more complicated......"

"Hehe, don't get too excited, your rambler sounds amazing, but it seems to be a little slower, and by the time it models all the obstacles, maybe my kids have already reached their destination!"

Mark is still optimistic, because his group of toy cars has been in a state of chaos, but it has been pushing forward step by step, while the "Rambler", on the other hand, keeps modeling the environment, and after calculating the road strength, it moves forward a few meters, and after approaching a new obstacle, it stops again to scan. (To be continued)