Starwhal Brief Summary:

• robots are surrounded by light tags
• any light detected by the light sensors increments negative points
• Robots are allowed 1 flashlight to shine on opponent's robots
• Robots are also allowed a line scan camera

Capabilities required to play game:

• Light tags working
• steerable flashlight

First got Simple Point Illumination working with a simple conical model for flashlight ray

Twitch Plays Starwhal

Hypothesis: Literate programming is suited for teaching students programming.

Design choices:

• Simulation instead of working on real hardware:
  • Easier to iterate, proven to be compatible with literate programming tools.
• Starwhal game
  • sensor-heavy game.
• Twitch Plays
  • for fun

TODO

• forum post on V-REP forums asking about having multiple python processes interact with simulation
• means of communication... python to embedded script only uses Signals. Signals seem to take 100ms to transmit...
  • vrep lcm?
  • Now it seems to me that this doesn't matter at all.. we don't require any ROS --> embedded script communication
• take video of the light demo

Prior Art:

Doug Blank's Calico Project

• http://science.slc.edu/~jmarshall/papers/sigcse2012.pdf
• Computing in a familiar 'context', so students aren't re-learning the toolkit in every lesson.

interesting: http://vvvv.org/