Robot playing chess

Lynxmotion Robot Arms
1

My new project:

I want to create a robot that will play chess with me. I am tired of playing on the internet :slight_smile:.

There is a super cool video of a humanoid robot playing here:
youtube.com/watch?v=2wzT4vafXOA

I want to create just an upper body humanoid robot (smaller than the one in the video) and want to use the Lynx 6 arm with the 3 finger gripper. (I think Jim posted a picture of asimilar gripper a while ago).

The robot head will just be a pair of camera for stereoscopic vision.
And I will use my VIA ML6000EA mini-itx board linked to an ABB (Atom 28 Pro).

Questions:

Can I use the Lynx 6 as a humanoid arm. I would probably need 2 DOF (pan & tilt?) at the base.

And how difficult it would be to use the new gripper on the arm?

Thanks,

Amir.

2

This is a link to the arm I built with friends, it’s made of lego mindstorm and it’s COMPLETELY autonomous.

Link

3

Then why was some one typing in the background?

4

He was probably typing his move in for the robot software so it could be processed. :slight_smile:

8-Dale

5

That’s cool.
How do you indicate, it is the arm’s turn to play?
I don’t see any cameras or vision system. How do you indicate the new position of the pieces to the arm?

Unless, these positions are entered with the keyboard, in which case I wouldn’t call this a “COMPLETELY” autonomous arm.

6

As long as the arm’s control program is responding to the entered move position, and nothing else, then it would still be autonomous as long as it is not being directly controlled. The keyboard move input would just be another sensor input. :slight_smile:

Afterall, we have our robots that respond to sensor inputs that signal changes in the environment. These robots are still autonomous as long as they are not being directly controlled by any other means.

8-Dale

7

I agree, I would still consider it as autonomous, if you entered the opponent’s position and then, based on that “input” the program determines what its best move is and executes it. It is autonomous in the decision making.

Now we can always argue whether it is “completely” autonomous or not, in this case.

8

As I wrote, it’s completely autonomous.

2 Webcams are mounted 90° each other, arm clamp position is triangulated (this has been the major difficulty of the project) and the arm is closed loop controlled (we were forced to that because Lego Mindstorm has only continous rotation motors).

The move of the player is read via the second webcam, mounted above the chess table. Special moves like “castling” are also recognised by the software, and the computer’s next move is decided by GnuChess.

The only thing you have to do is starting the software. Then the match can procede till the end.

9

The arm waits until the chess table changes, after the changement it waits for 5 (or 10, can’t remember) seconds and then makes its move.

This is done by a webcam mounted above the chess table.