Welcome to COM3528 Cognitive and Biomimetic Robotics¶

A picture of MiRo in one of the first labs back in 2019

Introduction¶

This section of the website is dedicated to COM3528 Cognitive and Biomimetic Robotics and is integral part of the COM3528 practical sessions. The aim of these pages is to give you the tools and technical skills required to successfully perform your biomimetic or bio-inspired group project using the MiRo robots.

The material here will help you get familiar with the MiRo Developer Kit (or MDK for short), and get a better idea of the capabilities and limitations of the MiRo platform itself, thus helping you design a study which can feasibly be completed in the relatively short timeframe.

Preliminaries¶

This course assumes some prior knowledge of the Robot Operating System (ROS), and experience of working in Linux and terminal use.
Computer Science Students that have had COM2009/3009 Robotics labs should feel right at home; for anyone else without a ROS background (or if you're feeling rusty), I strongly recommend to have a look at the excellent teaching materials on ROS prepared by my colleague Dr Tom Howard.
Some Computer Science students might also have fond memories working with MiRo and MiRoCode, as part of the COM1005 Machines and Intelligence. While certainly useful, any previous experience with MiRos is not essential for this course.

Structure¶

The labs will start with an overview of the MDK in the Gazebo simulator, also serving as a ROS refresher and giving you a chance to apply some of the concepts you have learnt in COM2009 on a different robot. During the taught part of the labs, you will learn about the capabilities and existing functionality of the MiRo robot.

The first part is designed to be done inside the WSL-ROS environment, which should make the workflow familiar. Afterwards, the dedicated Diamond laptops will be used to connect to and control physical MiRos. There are some important differences between the real and the simulated robot, as some things that you can do in the simulator are not possible in the real world and vice versa.