Page of "Cride"

- CRIDE is being released with all its cmponenets for updated openCV libraries 1.0. The following improvements will also be available:

- Impprovements on the Server-client interafacing as well as improved Cynthea internet capabilities (optional)

- Qunatum simulator is still a part of this release however without a dedicated CPU farm it is non advised to run it.

- The emotional interface is being remade as well as the control level in order to give the robot a greater possibilites of movement.

- CRIDE is reaching its final stage. The full integration is to be terminated in the next few weeks. The latest additions includes the face recognition and tracking, quantum automata simulator so as extension to KHR1 robot controller and CRL language modifications

- Windows port is completely inactive

- For more updates check the manuals

- Windows port was succefully tested. Using the SAPI 5 from the makers of the popular environment allowed to generate a partial speech/mouth synchronization,

- Most of classes have the Bio-Extension (still the core has to be changed),

- Sync and Continue are now operational

- Alice is integrated and allows to generate dialogues between robots -- check the video section

- First partial port to windows was tested. Unlike my expectation this is done in less than one hour of code tweaking. Th efinal version of windows version will be available end of this week,

- MNS is clean, and the temporal control of the commands is now much more transparent and allows to design much nicer and smoother behaviors,

- Network dialogue is already up but running only partially because the cause-consequence speach-answer-speech must be controlled somehow which is not done yet,

- The first skins designed in the Portland Robotics Laboratory are already shown in the pictures section. We tried a whole bunch of different approaches, finally the most plausibke is to use Latex foam (home made), sprayed over the mask and fast dried allows to design almost perfect skins/masks!

- Alice integrated into CRIDE,

- New CRL commands added specifically for temporal control and synchronization

- GUI improved, Server Improved, minor glitches eliminated

- Newly updatet and recoded the command processing,

- The synchronization is now dependent only on the SpeechSynthesizer --- Few tweaks required

- The sensor interface was temporarily Disabled

Functions

Latest Add-on:

-- Bio-monitor - monitors the energy level of the robot so as allows to modify the current energetic and hedonic state of the robot
-- Calibration monitor now functional
-- Speech monitor functional
-- Vision monitor functional

Parts in development:

-- Learning probes and electrode
-- Drag-and-Drop development environment for building robots.

Operational parts:

-- Simple robot control related functions such as loading/saving robot from/to CRL.
-- Robot control via scripting -- Synchronous and asynchronous execution -- Multi-robot interconnect (synchronous, astynchronous)

Description

CRIDE stands for Common Robot Integrated Development Environment and it is a GUI to the Cynthi-A humanoid robots. At this stage both Cride and Cynthi-A are a bundle so it is not possible to run the Cynthi-A robot without he CRIDE environment but it is most likely it will be enabled in short future.

CRIDE allows to construct, configure, connect the robot so as many other features. It is designed to be used on humanoid robots, such as robotic heads, small robots but it can also be used on moving robots such as walkers. The idea behind is that the robot interfaced through CRIDE can be programmed to execute a script given in CRL, that is a simple sequence of commands. These can be a acting sequence, communication sequence or any other type sequence that is in general independent from the the environment. (The CRL specification does not provide any logic or rules to allow generating input-output relations). Instead, the script provides a sequnce of desired behavior. Instead, the interaction is made using various Sensor modules, such as Motion Detection or Speech recognition, that combined with the robot Dynamic Mood environment and Quantum Simulated Brain provides a tool for adaptation adn learning of the robot.

Install requirements and directions:

General Requirements:

- ALICE implemented entirely in Java (ProgramD - sources).

- Java comm API, implementation of Serial and Parallel protocol in Java.

- Robot with a ASC16/SSCII controller (optionally a simple PIC can be used).

Linux/Unix based systems:

- FreeTTS implementation of JSAPI (or any other compatible with JSAPI).

- Mbrola, linux implementation of speech synthesis binary and voices.

- Speech Synthesis and Recognition software such as Fonix or Naturally Speaking from Scansoft can be used. Beside these commercial application there is a variety of speech synthesis tools a list of some of them is here

- OpenCV - get it from sourceforge

Optional Components:

- Sensors controlle by simple circuits can be directly plugged into the computer and can be integrated as ressources for the robot.

For downloads and manuals go to the Download section.