The Swarming Heads Webserver was developed for the purpose of direct and interactive control of the Swarming Heads robots. "Parents" from the Adopt-A-Robot program had expressed interest in having direct control of the robots so as to drive them wherever they wished. The team supervising and developing the Adopt-A-Robot project, offered the project to develop the webserver to University of Western Sydney School of Computing and Mathematics (SCM) and School of Engineering, with SCM replying first. The project was allocated to a team of Professional Experience students in their final year of Computer Science/ICT. This team consisted of Kynan McCutcheon, Daniel Grech, Dominic Colyer and Patricio Alzamora.

Over a period of 14 weeks a website/server was developed with the following tasks in mind:

 

• Interactive control through both keyboard and mouse
• On-board video streaming capability
• Interface to view system errors, ie. edge/bump detection, disconnected from server,etc
• 2D mapping generated from Microsoft Xbox Kinect sensor
• Toggle between map and video stream
• Toggle between automatic THAMBS mode and user control
• Chat service allowing user to interact with their robot's chatbot

The above specifications were made with developments to the robot platform in mind and as such some information was never added to the robot platform. It was specified at the start of the project that the only compulsory task as to pass control messages between user and robot. This task was achieved.

There are some aims that weren't filled mainly due to lacking robotic functionality, but were developed none-the-less so that one day they may be used. These include:

 

• 2D mapping - Data format missing as not yet implemented on the robot platform
• Interface to view system errors - bump/edge detection messages not implemented on robot platform
• Toggle between THAMBS and user control - decision was made to just have user control messages

  overide THAMBS messages

• Chat service allowing user to interact with their robot's chatbot - No chatbot message format

  implemented on robot platform

 

The project has been deemed a success by the Swarming Heads project members, exceeding their expectations and leaving them satisied that they received a quality product.

The project was used at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, in conjunction with the Swarming heads installation with great success. Many people were left smiling after a session of controlling their robot (bumping into people and other robots), old and young (the youngest was 4 years old) used with little to no explanation. The use of the website was supported by original team member Kynan McCutcheon, who provided technical support to the MARCS Swarming Heads researchers and the general public.

The server and installation files are available from the Thinking Head Sourceforge Repository.

Or alternatively from the Thinking Head SVN