Interactive Screen for Educational Purposes in Robotics
Michal Tölgyessy, Martin Dekan, Peter Hubinský · 2019
Students studying the field of robotics need to have both practical and theoretical knowledge in various areas. These areas include understanding sensors, 3D space, transforms between coordinate frames and interpreting point-cloud data. A great tool for them to gain the necessary experience is an interactive screen. It is an HMI (Human-Machine Interface) that makes the topic even more interesting. A state-of-the-art 3D sensor commonly used by the robotics community is used (KinectV2). This sensor is placed above the screen and rotated in order to sense human activity in front of the screen. An illustrational task is detection of the closest object in front of the screen. In order to do this, students must compute the transform between the coordinate frame of the sensor and frame of the screen. To do this they can use several approaches. One of them is using the Aruco Markers. They need to design and verify necessary mathematical formulas and test their solution. Next, they learn to work with point-cloud data. They must detect the closest person standing next in front of the screen. They can achieve this by computing the plane equation of the floor in combination with interpreting the data from the perspective of the coordinate frame of the screen. Next, they learn about thresholding operations within the scanned point-cloud. Finally, they must invent an algorithm for interaction between the segmented person and the screen. Completing this project gives students the necessary knowledge for more sophisticated robotics' applications, especially in the field of HRI (Human-Robot Interaction).