Robot Users Guide
The Prip Lab robot on which SAIL is being implemented, tested and refined,
includes a manual GUI Software interface which the researchers can use to
receive visual feedback on their ground breaking experimental programs.
The manual interface will be described in detail here as well as the function
calls that may be used when developing and testing the autonomous
use of the robot. By necessity, when the robot is in automatic mode,
there is no visual feedback provided on the computer monitor so that the
full processing power of the PC can be devoted to the robotic functions.
However, since the SAIL programs are generally multi-threaded, as increased
computing power is needed, multi-processor machines can be implemented with
little or no rewriting of code. But enough of this! Let's take a look at
the interface.
The SAIL GUI
The main screen of the SAIL GUI looks like this: (you can click on various
items in the window to jump to them in the text)
All of the SAIL screens are 640 x 480 pixels in order to accommodate
the LCD monitor used with the robot. the Main Tab
is always available and cannot be turned off. All of the other interface
tabs can be activated or deactivated by the menu items. The tabs do not
appear in any specific order, but rather, are dynamically assigned in the
order they are chosen. Once the tabs are visible and the corresponding software
modules loaded, the user can switch between robot functions simply by clicking
on the appropriate tab.
Menu Items
The File drop-down menu
includes a save and a print item. These choices save or print the contents
of the message window for later viewing. If the robot encounters some problems,
these messages may be very useful for diagnostic purposes particularly in
the automatic mode when this is the only form of feedback that the user
receives.
The View
drop-down menu contains two items, 'Clear Screen' and 'Status Bar'. The
'Clear Screen' item clears the contents of the message window. When activating
this item, the message window contents are cleared from memory and cannot
be recovered. This item should only be selected only if you are sure you
no longer require the messages recorded so far. The 'Status Bar' choice
toggles the status bar at the bottom of the window on and off as is common
in most windows programs.
The Reach
drop-down menu contains an item for turning on the robot arm control. When
activated, the software needed to control the arm is loaded into memory
and a Reach user interface tab is added to the main
screen.
The Listen
drop-down menu contains an item for turning on the robot 'ears'. When activated,
the software needed to control the listening functions is loaded into memory
and a Listen user interface tab is added to the
main screen.
The Speak
drop-down menu contains items for turning on the robot 'mouth'. When activated,
the software needed to control the speaking functions is loaded into memory.
There are two speech interface tabs available. One is Text
to Speech and is basically a text reader. The other is an LPC
Synthesis interface and is used to phonetically create speech. This
method provides a much more realistic talking voice for the robot.
The Move
drop-down menu contains an item for control the robots mobile base. When
activated, the software needed to control the base is loaded into memory
and a Move user interface tab is added to the main
screen.
The Head
drop-down menu contains two items. One toggles a Head-Manual
user interface tab on and off which loads the software needed to control
the video input for the 'eyes' as well as software to control where the
eyes are looking. The second menu item loads an automatic control where
the eyes can move and converge on a single point which is necessary for
determining distance. When activated, the software needed to control the
convergence is loaded into memory and an Head-Automatic
user interface tab is added to the main screen.
The Help
drop-down menu contains an item to display information about the SAIL project and the software version number.