Nao
Summary
We are a team of people who are interested in robotics, software part of robotics to be more precise. After Robotex 2012 competition we wanted to do something cool and challenging, so we ended up playing around with 4 Nao robots who just waited to be found :)
Our goal is to prepare the Naos for Robocup Standard Platform competition. But, whether or not we are able to succeed, we will make an effort to learn as much as possible through making the Naos do something useful and pleasant.
Our solutions to some important problems
- Image segmentation and blob detection
- Line detection
- Getting real world coordinates (Nao world) from fixed image frame
How To
Developing software for Nao is full of challanges. Here we have some tutorials/instructions that might help you get started with the basic things.
What problems have we faced?
Beginnings "Big Unknown"
As you are reading this you are on the right direction:) We found also useful to read other users' tutorials especially wiki from Robotics Group of the University of León.
Version differences
We started with Naos having version 1.12 everything and started learning from the default reference of SDK 1.14. We noticed it but didn't think that it would make a lot of difference... Wrong! Aldebaran is very actively advancing it's software. We had many problems with modules not existing on Nao etc and overall have spent a lot of time on it. So update and work with the newest and the coolest modules, or go to API 1.12 reference to avoid some frustration. A good tutorial is here.
It is also useful to know that Aldebaran has made a list of function which have been changed [1].
N.B
When updating Naos, don't forget updating the SDK, cross-toolchain, qibuild etc. If you do, you might encounter some errors that are really hard to interpret. One of such errors occoured when a module was built using the old version of Atom-cross-toolchain. When Naoqi tried loading the module, it gave:
libboost_signals-mt-1_45.so.1.45.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
"Hidden" files in users.aldebaran-robotics.com
Getting state of art software for nao you can visit http://users.aldebaran-robotics.com/. Login. Go Software > Download > All Downloads > Navigate there (all software isn't on the front page!).