Re: R: Abominations, schedule & Euler angles

Good reply, Caramine

Here is 1 cent from me too.

A spectator, who obviously has not tried to make a two-legged robot
walk, cannot appreciate the work and thinking and testing that has
gone into just making a two-legged robot move purpously. (his "name"
came from just hitting the middle row of keys at the left side "asdfg"
a couple of times, he liked to be anonymous obviously.)
Also this contest runs for many months and the "diving" is just one of
the things that came up. It will go again, because amoungst the top
ranking robots it is not decisive anymore.
I added the dive to my robot becaus I programmed it for my "sparring
partner" judoka to test a defence, and then thought: attack is the
best defence, and make it faster then Coyote's. It did work for a few
days, then other robots did it better.

And about the contest rules:

This was a new type of match / robot sport, and the rules had to
evolve with the development of the robots. In human sports, rules
change too. And I learned to forget about the human form of judo early
on in the contest (I have practiced judo 8 years in my teens).

It is a wise to think about the newly proposed model changes.
There are only 4 months to go. And model changes are much more
destructive for controller programs then changes is match rules. It
will mean a lot of programming and testing, and a lot of time. Early
in the contest there ware two such changes in the model (the floor was
slippery like a dancing foor, and the maximum servo speed/force was
double the current value of 5), and even now there are some "broken"
robots that are not updated for these change.

Perhaps it would be wise to leave the proposed drastic changes for the
next contest.
There is a chance that a number of contenders won't update for this
model change, or perhaps don't have the time for it. And the primary
interest of the EPFL students stops in January.

Another point is, that perhaps some contenders could have some more
technical help. The Wiki pages give some, they actually were created
as a spin-off from technical discussions on this message board. A
second message board perhaps?

Frans (Kimaita)

--- In [email protected], "DI VIRGILIO Carmine"
<divirg@g...> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>     I would like to give my 2 cents about this topic.
> 
> Even if my Judoka can walk and I don't think that new rules could
affect my
> willingness to participate to this contest, I do not completely
agree with
> asfsdf sdfsdfsdf (!)  .
> 
> Which is more stupid, a stupid controller beating a smart one or the
stupid
> controller itself? I think that providing us with more complicated rules
> would lower the number of active participants. This rules should
have been
> inserted from the beginning. My guess is that the fact that we have 32
> competitors (7 recently updated) out of 77 means that someone was
not even
> able to move a servo! We should think about people that spent maybe
weeks
> implementing their controller and now, from a day to another, their
> controller will be simply.... out!
> 
> asfsdf sdfsdfsdf (what a strange name you have!!) finding a solution
to this
> kind of attack should be a good challenge for everybody. Even
Coyetes first
> attack is really smart and does not give to the opponent many chances.
> Should we say that is not good because He found a smart solution? I
> implemented that solution too.... it is 10 rows of code! Would you
say, in a
> soccer game, that the winning team not attacking but simply holding
the ball
> until the time expires, is not giving the opponent a chance? Rules!
That's
> it!
> 
> Anyway, whatever the decision would be I will adequate my
controller... I
> really like the contest and I would like to thank Oliver for his
support.
> 
> Good luck!
> Ciao
>     Carmine
> 
> This is my controller... enjoy... of course this is the previous version
> :).... well I am not a java programmer (I use Ada!!) and I don't like
> putting comments since I have to put comments each day for my
job!!!! So,
> don't complain!!! Ah... I don't even know what an Euler angle is....
but my
> friend Rino is studying for me to improve the controller!!!! Feel
free to
> use it.
> 
>  Da: Olivier Michel [mailto:Olivier.Michel@c...]
> Inviato: lunedì 22 dicembre 2003 11.03
> A: [email protected]
> Oggetto: [webots-contest] Abominations, schedule & Euler angles
> 
> 
>   Frans wrote:
> 
>   >what is the match schedule in the coming 2 weeks full of holidays?
>   >
>   >
>   I will be out of office from Dec 24th, 2003 to Jan 5th, 2004.
However, I
>   now have a script for launching the round server every week day at
2 pm
>   (CET). So, unless the server crashes you can expect rounds to run
on the
>   every week day from now until I am back. So, a round will run today,
>   tomorrow, on Wed. 24th, Thu 25th, Fri 26th, Mon 29th, Tue 30th, Wed
>   31th, Thu 1st, Fri 2nd and Mon 5th when I am back.
> 
>   asfsdf sdfsdfsdf wrote:
> 
>   > I've been observing the contest for quite a while now and in my
>   > opinion it has undergone some really sad development during this
week,
>   > having robots that do actually nothing but random attacks or strange
>   > movements placed in the top ranks. Climax of this was Curry and
>   > Sonovobic overhelming Coyote. Beating the old grandmaster,
capable of
>   > tracking his enemy and planning, just by blindly and continuously
>   > punching (Curry) or by doing a weirdo frogstyle random bouncing
>   > movement (Sonovobic) sounds so ridicoulous to me. Kp2 made a lot of
>   > ranks using a dive attack that acutally rotates his legs through his
>   > chest in a ugly looking manner.
>   >
>   > As it looks right now, a silly and ugly competitor is more likely to
>   > win a online contest in robotics than a reflecting and humanoid
>   > looking robot. I really hope that there won't be many clones of such
>   > behavior, as it was the case when everyone started adopting Coyotes
>   > dive attack. If so, the Judo contest will turn into a freakshow of
>   > abominations not worth watching anymore.
>   >
>   > However, merry Xmas and a happy new year to all competitors who
>   > provided their fans with funny and astonishing fights in the tatami.
>   >
>   > A quite disappointed spectator
> 
>   I do agree with you. I believe the problem comes from two facts:
(1) the
>   robots can stand up too easily and in a non-realistic way, it
seems that
>   the leg servos are too strong and (2) there are no joint limits.
To fix
>   that and keep the realism of this contest as high as possible I will
>   change the robot models again.
> 
>   The following changes will be introduced as soon as possible:
> 
>   (1) Make it impossible to stand up too easily (from doing the splits
>   directly to standing up). This can be achieved by 3 different
ways: (a)
>   increase the mass of the robot (by increasing the density from 0.1 to
>   0.2 or so) or (b) decrease the maxForce parameter of each servo,
or (c)
>   increase again the friction coefficient with the ground. It will be
>   probably a mixture of these 3 possibilities.
> 
>   (2) Add joint limits for each joint. Madrag and others could not any
>   more make impossible moves (leg turning around).
> 
>   This will clearly break the behavior of many existing robot
controllers.
>   But I believe this is a necessary price to pay to keep this contest
>   interesting for all.
> 
>   Mike wrote:
> 
>   >The DecimalFormat.format(double arg) function creates a string
equal to
> "?"
>   >when the argument is equal to Double.NaN.
>   >The Double.NaN value occurs when the argument of the asin( )
function is
>   >outside of the range from {-1, 1}, such as 1.0000000001.
>   >I have added a check in the routine to force the argument of
asin( ) be
> in
>   >the valid range so the Double.NaN does not occur.
>   >
>   >
>   >>> Do you care to publish the routine on the Wiki pages? I can
make the
>   >>> page if you don't have time.
>   >>>
>   >>
>   >>
>   >There is a new Wiki page showing the Inclinometer Angle Calculations.
>   >
>   >Olivier wrote:
>   >
>   >
>   >>>Thanks Frans for this feedback. I will add the routines of Mike
into
> the
>   >>>Controller class and document them, so that anyone can use them
easily.
>   >>>This will be part of Webots 4.0.19, which I hope to release next
> tuesday.
>   >>>
>   >>
>   >>
>   >The noise error added during the contest should probably be added
to the
>   >resultant X,Y, and Z angles and not to the OpenGL matrix
elements.  If
> the
>   >noise is added to the matrix elements the actual error in the
computed
>   >angles will vary with the angle and be a maximum of
(2*NoiseOfElement) at
>   >angle=PI/4, and a minimum close to 0 at angle=0 and PI/2.
>   >angle=PI/4,    atan2(1+noise / 1+noise)
>   >angle=0, PI/2,    atan2(largevalue+noise / 0+noise ), 
atan2(0+noise /
>   >largevalue+noise)
>   >
>   >Also, the argument of asin( ) should be forced into the valid
range of
> {-1,
>   >1} to prevent returning an angle of Double.NaN.
>   >
>   Many thanks Mike for the Wiki page and for this continuously
maintained
>   and debugged inclinometer / compass code. The noise only applies
to the
>   matrix[12] matrix[13] and matrix[14] values and only affect the robot
>   position but not it's orientation. As you use only matrix[1],
matrix[5],
>   matrix[8], matrix[9] and matrix[10], this should not affect your
>   computation of the inclination. I will keep this function as open
source
>   code in the Judoka0 and Judoka1 sample classes so that anyone can
still
>   improve / fix it.
> 
>   -Olivier
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
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