{"id":5,"date":"2018-09-01T03:12:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T03:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/botlab\/?p=5"},"modified":"2018-09-01T03:12:22","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T03:12:22","slug":"botlab-week-1-development-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/botlab\/index.php\/2018\/09\/01\/botlab-week-1-development-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"BotLab: Week 1 Development bLog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello and welcome to BotLab’s Dev. Blog!<\/p>\n

The following is meant to serve as an online reference of our development process and is broken down into team member’s individual roles.<\/p>\n

Production<\/b><\/h1>\n

I met the team on Monday, and after setting up the room, we discussed preferred roles and what we each wanted to get out of the project. Fortunately, we have a well balanced team with no overlap in intended roles. The team breakdown is as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

Producer: Jehan Sandhu (me!)<\/span><\/p>\n

Programmer: Guanghao Yang<\/span><\/p>\n

3D Artist: Kangyan Li <\/span><\/p>\n

UI\/UX + 2D Art: Meng (Nicole) Wan<\/span><\/p>\n

Designer + Programmer: Trisha Surve<\/span><\/p>\n

We casually met our faculty instructors, Mike C. and John D, and with their input, soon began blocking out a rough schedule for our core hours. We also began to prepare for our first face-to-face client meeting on Friday by researching organizations and experiences that dealt with bot building, systems learning, and noteworthy games and mechanics. <\/span><\/p>\n

Following the advice of Mike, we met John Balash earlier on in the week to learn more about our client (they have a professional rapport), how to best prepare for our Friday meeting, and the types of questions to ask of the client. Additionally John will be assisting us with getting Middle School children to playtest with.<\/span><\/p>\n

We requested equipment and platforms midway through the week, four ipads and four android tablets to use ARKit or ARCore accordingly, and decided on the team name of BotLab. I also reached out to the client via e-mail to set the basic agenda for Friday\u2019s meeting. The latter of the week was spent preparing a short presentation and materials for our client meeting. <\/span><\/p>\n

We met our client, Bill, on Friday (check out the pictures below!). After a brief period of team introductions, we began open discussion about the project. Our client was very warm and open minded, explaining what the organization wanted while also noting he wanted us to leverage our individual skills towards the team. Additionally, we were able to lock down some constraints: what we make has to be portable and easy to demo on accessible hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our first client meeting!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next week we will meet Tuesday to fill out a RACI chart and we will begin daily SCRUM meetings. We\u2019re all very excited to be working with the National Robotics League.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Programming<\/b><\/h1>\n

We did a research on what kind of technology we might use. For now, we think AR could be a good fit to our project.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most popular AR platforms are ARkit and ARCore.<\/span><\/p>\n

For ARKit, it’s the technology introduced during WWDC 17. its key highlights include<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01.Tracking: Ability to accurately track the device position in the real-world. Using the Visual Inertial Odometer (VIO), the ARKit combines with camera tracking and motion sensor data, with which a real-time position of the device is recorded. Additionally, no tracking cards are required<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02.Landscape Understanding and Lightning Perception: iPhones and iPads would be especially aware of the surroundings using the ARKit. It comes with the ability to identify surfaces in the real-world environment, like floor, tables, walls, ceiling, etc. Also referred to as \u2018Plane Detection\u2019. Remember observing the vapour and shadow effect in the demo?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03.Rendering: It provides an easy integration with SpriteKit, SceneKit as Metal, with an added support for in Unity and Unreal Engine<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s available on iOS 11 only<\/span><\/p>\n

Another choice is ARCore, it’s Google\u2019s answer to Apple\u2019s ARKit was ARCore – the AR framework for Android devices. Compare to ARKit, it emphasis on following:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01.Motion Tracking: ARCore observes IMU sensor data and feature points of the surrounding space to determine both the position and orientation of the device as per its movement<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02.Environmental Understanding : ARCore detects horizontal surfaces using features similar to motion tracking<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Light Estimation: ARCore detects the lighting ambience of the device, thereby enhancing the appearance and making the visual accurate in real-time<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03.User Interaction: With the \u2018hit-testing\u2019 feature, ARCore detects intersection of light rays in the device\u2019s camera view<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a04.Anchoring Objects: To accurately place a virtual object, ARCore defines an anchor that ensures its ability to track the object\u2019s displacement over a period of time. ARCore efficiently improves its understanding of the position and environment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The SDK preview qualifiers are – Android 7.0 Nougat devices : Google Pixel, Pixel XL and Samsung Galaxy S8<\/span><\/p>\n

We don’t think it’s good for us to have it on head-mounted virtual retinal display like Magic Leap and Microsoft Hololens as it requires extra equipments and it’s not convenient to bring it to everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

For engine middleware, we would like to pick Unity. Both because we used Unity a lot and Unity provides a good support for almost every AR technology to easily integrated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Design<\/b><\/h1>\n

Role:<\/b><\/p>\n

I will be working as a Game Designer on this project and would be leveraging my technical skills to help with Gameplay programming. <\/span><\/p>\n

Responsibility for client meeting:<\/b><\/p>\n

For our first client meeting, I was responsible for researching games that incorporate \u201c<\/span>Stealth Learning<\/span><\/a>\u201d for kids. We had to make sure that we were not only looking at past robotics games that already exist, but also past ETC projects that have cleverly demonstrated this type of learning. I ended up analysing Water Bears and BattleBots: Beyond the BattleBox. It was particularly interesting to understand their design perspectives and principles upon which the games were built. As a team, we had to get as familiar as we could with designing and developing a game for this space. We also had a meeting with John Balash who gave us really good advice on preparing for our meeting with the client as he knew the client before hand. Based on John\u2019s advice, we made a list of things that the two games did right and another list to identify their shortcomings to have a discussion around this topic in case they were brought up during the meeting. <\/span><\/p>\n

Important questions:<\/b><\/p>\n

Mike Christel suggested that we go through Sabrina Culyba\u2019s Transformational Framework draft to identify the set of questions we needed to ask our client for us to proceed.<\/span><\/p>\n

These were some of the questions we focussed on:<\/span><\/p>\n