A chess playing robot: lab course in robot sensor integration

To obtain practical experience in intelligent robotics, a laboratory course has been developed in which students have to create a chess-playing robot. The system has to detect the move of a human opponent and has to take appropriate action. Beside knowledge about the integration of sensing and control of the robot arm, the students gain experience in working in a team to realize a medium-size project. The SCIL-IMAGE package is used. It runs under UNIX and XWindows. SCIL is a multilevel environment originally developed in image processing for feasibility studies. IMAGE is an image processing package linked to SCIL. The lowest level is formed by a C-interpreter. Using this interpreter, complete C-programs can be developed. Interpreted code can be directly combined with precompiled code from incorporated libraries. If required these programs can also be compiled and linked to SCIL