Re: [simspark-devel] About 3D Devel Plan

[Joschka B. <jos...@am...>]

Hi all,

On Jan 8, 2009, at 4:46 AM, Hedayat Vatankhah wrote:

> Hi all!
> First: Happy new year :)

Happy New Year to everyone :-)

> "Feng Xue" <hen...@ma...> wrote on 01/07/2009 05:38:14  
> PM:
>> Hi Yuan,
>>
>> 21:39:52 2009-01-07 Yuan Xu:
>>
>> Hello & Happy new year!
>> 2009/1/7 Feng Xue hen...@ma...:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > First, happy new year and wish you have a good time in the year  
>> 2009!
>> >
>> > And here is my situation, we(WrightEagle) decided not to  
>> participate
>> > simlation3D this year because of being short of hands. And I am  
>> now a
>> > little busy with my paper and SPL league. But I will try my best  
>> to finish
>> > my assignment.
>> What a pity!
>> I am even afraid there will be not enough teams in RoboCup2009!

Actually, I know of at least 2 teams from Humanoid League who are  
thinking about joining the 3D Sim-League this year, so I hope it'll be  
alright ;-)

>>
>> I am pity too.
> :(
>

It's sad, but understandable. You probably are very busy with the SPL  
stuff. One question though: the Aldebaran people were really  
interested in getting in touch with us to help and improve our Nao  
model. Do you think you would have some time to talk to them? I can  
get you in touch.

>
>>
>> >
>> > Considering the previous discussion about the OGRE stuff, I think  
>> I'd better
>> > probably give up this task for 2009 and here is my opinion: our  
>> simulator
>> > has these 3 key problems which are kind of restricting or  
>> shrinking our
>> > research area.
>> >
>> > First, no noise added on the controlling joint speed. This ideal  
>> thing will
>> > never happen on the real robot. And, because of the elasticity of  
>> the
>> > material of the real robot, the real angle is not that reported  
>> by the
>> > sensor. However, ODE does not support elastic joint or soft  
>> things. But we
>> > can simulate this by adding noise to it.
>> Adding noise is easy for MC, but hard for teams ;-)
>>
>> Yes! But adding a little noise is better than no noise ;-)
> I think it is what OC should decide about, right?!

Since it's a technical issue, I would say it's a TC decision; but  
probably nobody is going to complain as long as there _is_ a  
decision ;-)

> Anyway, if any noise is going to be added to the server, I think it  
> should be done as soon as possible!
>

True. Does anybody have a suggestion for suitable noise models?

>
>>
>> > Second, the sync model which is already in the todo list.  
>> According to games
>> > of ChinaOpen2008, making a good sync model will let the simulator  
>> run more
>> > stable agents. Then the strategy becomes much more important. The  
>> dream of
>> > integrating 2D and 3D will probably come true. I think the  
>> strategy is a
>> > great challenge because it is hard to scale the speed of opponent  
>> agent
>> > which is relatively easier in 2D.
>> >
>> But I think the sync mode is suitable for research, but not for  
>> competition.
>> Because the computation time of agent is an important factor, the
>> agent should react in real (or given) time.
>>
>> In ChinaOpen2008, the simulation speed is about 1/3 of the original  
>> speed. However,
>> we can simulate 8 agents or even more.
> Sync mode is certainly not suitable for competitions (since one  
> agent can hold the competitions as much as it likes), but we might  
> use simulation time instead of real time for competitions. This  
> feature is already implemented, so it only needs a decision. Again,  
> I wonder who should decide about it! Maybe OC?! (I think I should  
> read committees  tasks again :))

Again TC, I think. But someone in the committee should bring up the  
issues, take the initiative, and push for a deadline; otherwise  
chances are that there will be no decision (from my experience).

>
>
>>
>> > Third, the information that agent received from the server is too  
>> few. I'd
>> > suggest we provide the restricted vision perceptor with the  
>> information of
>> > hands and legs. And, we'd better provide the camera perceptor  
>> which is
>> > firstly making our robot model like the real robot and secondly  
>> extend the
>> > research area. However, this makes the sensor informaion quite  
>> large. But if
>> > the sync model is good, this problem will probably be solved.
>> I have a draft version of image camera, see this:
>> http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~xu/image_sensor.png
>> But I hacked the communication between agent and server...
>>
>> Awesome! And this reminds me the feature of external monitor. We  
>> really need
>> a powerful monitor!
> Really nice :) If I manage to implement the Player integration soon,  
> I think the communication problem will go away since Player supports  
> camera sensors...
>

Very cool, great work, Yuan :-) And Player integration sounds very  
nice, too!

Cheers,
Joschka