While building Hercules (now called Magni) we came up with a way to measure and track the progress of the robot, we called them the 12 Tasks of Hercules based on The 12 Labors of Hercules from Greek mythology. The idea was that we would create a list of challenges that we would like the robot to complete, and whoever was the first one to get the robot to complete the challenge would get some kind of prize based on what the challenge was.
With no further ado here are the 12 Tasks of Hercules:
- Drive around three cones
- Deliver a pizza from the front door to a pre-determined location in the building
- Detect the face/body of the owner
- Follow a pre-determined target shape
- Follow a detected person to deliver a cooler of beer*
- Avoid an unexpected object that suddenly falls in front of the robot
- Draw a chessboard indoors (with washable chalk)
- Deliver a cookie from one room in the room to another, through a non-predetermined route, avoiding unexpected obstacles
- Drive around the room for one week without crashing, hitting anyone or getting lost saying hello to known people
- Draw a chess board outdoors (with washable chalk)
- Identify a bad guy in a line up of people
- Drive around the office for one week identifying a predetermined persona non-grata every time they show up.
*As I am under 21 the challenge was performed with a cooler of soda
Each one of these challenges was designed to demonstrate different capabilities of the robot. Some of the challenges are mainly software based (ex: Challenge 3), while others are mainly to demonstrate the hardware (ex: Challenge 1). As of the writing of this post challenges 1-6 are complete.