[Playerstage-users] ER-1

[Gal A. K. <ga...@ma...>]

Dear  friends,

The ER-1 robot (by Evolution) is currently supported only at the level of the 
position driver. In other words, it can move, but cannot sense using its IR 
sensors, nor operate the gripper. This is very frustrating, given that all of 
these can be done on the windows side, but with no programmability. We have a 
few students potentially willing to work on the drivers, but the big problem 
is documentation: The ER comes with zero relevant documentation.

We see several components to this work. First, it isn't clear that the linux 
kernel supports the USB interface, i.e., to facilitate r/w access of 
information.  Second, the protocol for communicating with the sensors
(on top of the USB interface) is not known. 

This situation parallels that of the main ER control box, although significant
progress was made there by David  Feil-Seifer. He developed a linux kernel
driver for the USB interface, and decoded the protocol needed to develop the
position driver.

I am looking for advice on how to best approach this problem.  Suppose I have
N undergrads willing (ahmm...) and able (double ahmm...).  What should they 
do?  

1.  How can we determine if linux can send and receive information to the 
sensors?  The kernel (2.4.+) recognizes the device on the bus, but I don't 
think it has a place under /dev/usb/

2. What would be a good way to approach the protocol issue?  My default
is to record the interface traffic in windows, and then try to do reverse 
engineering of the protocol.

3.  Does anyone have any information on this !@#!% hardware?

Steps 1--3 above are for the IR sensors and for the gripper, of course.

Gal




-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gal A. Kaminka, Ph.D.                     http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~galk
Assistant Professor     Computer Science Dept.      Bar Ilan University
        Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible
   "Death is an engineering problem." -- Bart Kosko, "Fuzzy Thinking"
        "But life is not an engineering task." -- Gal A. Kaminka