Samuel Roberts with Roger Quinn, Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Algorithm Testing in Simulated Robot Environment

Begun Spring 2012, to finish Fall 2014

The Biorobotics Laboratory, in conjunction with the Biology Department, here at Case Western Reserve University has been studying cockroach behavior in an attempt to understand how they explore unknown environments. What has come out of this research are algorithms that mimic certain observed behaviors of the cockroaches, such as the Randomized Algorithm Mimicking Biased Lone Exploration in Roaches (RAMBLER). While these algorithms can and have been tested on physical robotics, a need has been identified to test these algorithms, in a computer simulation environment of the robot. This computer simulation is being developed in Player/Stage setup. Player/Stage is a tool used to simulate a robot and a controller. This goal of this project is to implement, test, and measure different algorithms in this simulated environment. In addition to RAMBLER, simpler algorithms like a bug algorithm will be programmed into the environment. Algorithms identified from literature will also be included. Various metrics will be identified, such as length of time, distance traversed, etc ,for comparison of these algorithms. Additionally, different mazes will be included in this testing.