Culture¶
The Machine Intelligence Lab has a unique student culture which creates a synergistic environment dedicated to the study and development of intelligent, autonomous robots. Without an application process, new members are encouraged to show up in MIL. We believe that learning occurs best by being inquisitive, and therefore we continually encourage all members to ask fellow MILers about their ongoing projects and tasks in order to learn about Subjugator and Navigator.
Meetings¶
As of the Spring 2022 semester, each team has its own meeting schedules and strategies for completing projects.
The software team currently meets on Mondays and Fridays, and software members are highly encouraged to come. In these meetings, software members exchange ideas with each other and help get new members set up with MIL. Software members who are not able to attend the meetings can reach out to any lead to get information about what was shared in the meeting.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion¶
MIL has always been, and will always be, strongly committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Glossary¶
This page lists common words / acronyms uses in MIL and robotics more generally. This should help get past some of our jargon.
- alarms¶
Global Boolean state shared by many nodes, such as kill or autonomous
- AUVSI¶
A non-profit organization which runs several competitions which MIL participates in
- bag¶
A file which stores a set of ROS messages received over a certain interval. Used to collect data to later play back for testing / debugging
- Drew Bagnell¶
An external USB hard-drive used to store bag files. Named after former member and legend Drew Bagnell, now CTO of Aurora Innovation
- DVL¶
A Doppler velocity log. Is used primarily in underwater systems to measure the linear velocity of the robot.
- Food train¶
An spontaneous event where people working in MIL go out somewhere to eat
- kill¶
A global state indicating the the robot cannot move / actuate. This is largely a safety feature. The robot can usually be killed remotely
- mission¶
The program that makes high level decision making to complete a given task. Sets waypoint using information from perception
An autonomous boat developed by MIL.
- node¶
A program running on a robot. Usually performs a very specific purpose
- perception¶
The program(s) which attempt to understand what is in the environment around a robot. Often uses cameras, lidar, radar, etc.
- POE¶
Power-Over-Ethernet, a variety of protocols to provide power over an ethernet cable, so that the same cable can be used to both power and transmit data.
- pose¶
A position (point in the world) and orientation (rotation in the world)
- RobotX¶
- root¶
The administrator / superuser account on Linux. Has permission to do anything on the system
The top most directory or a project or the entire filesystem. For example, the root of the repository is installed to ~/catkin_ws/src/mil
- Shuttle¶
A powerful computer in MIL used to run simulation tasks. Has been mostly replaced by Zobelisk
- State Estimation¶
The process / program which determines where we are in the world. Usually fuses multiple sensors ( DVL , gps, imu) to produce an estimate of the robot’s pose
- VRX¶
A competition named Virtual RobotX. Similar to RobotX, but no physical components or travel are involved.
- waypoint¶
A new pose for the robot to attempt to get to
- Zobelisk¶
A powerful computer in MIL used to run simulation tasks. Named after former member David Zobel