1. BEST National Conference 2011
Making the Most of
BEST Robotics Library for Simulink
Greg Young
Auburn University
Thursday Jul 21, 2011
Who am I and my background?
Who are you (students)? Quick poll of the audience.
The topic is MathWorks Simulink – one of the available programming options for your robot.

2. Copyright © 2011 BEST Robotics, Inc. All rights reserved.
Why MathWorks?
BEST National Corporate Partner 2011
STEM
Education
MW is our only National Corporate Partner.
Common goals.
MW industry standard tools; discuss industries and university use
Inspire students to pursue STEM careers.
Give students access to industry standard tools.
Provide simple, yet powerful programming tools.
Introduce students to state-of-the-art design methods.
Jul 21, 2011
Copyright © BEST Robotics, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. What They Do Science Technology Engineering Simulink Mathematics
Technical Computing
Data Acquisition
Data Analysis
Mathematical Modeling
Algorithm Development
Parallel Computing
Desktop & Web Deployment
Simulation and Model-Based Design
System Design and Simulation
Physical Modeling
Discrete-Event Simulation
Embedded Code Generation
Rapid Prototyping
HDL Code Generation and Verification
Verification, Validation and Test
Science
Technology
Mathematics
Engineering
Take a look at the Solutions that MathWorks provides….
It’s easy to see how each of these maps to the educational opportunities that we seek for our students (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
The Simulink offering which we are using in BEST is only a small part of their capabilities.
Simulink

4. Simulink Benefits Simple Programming Interface
- graphical drag and drop
More Efficient Design Flow
Parallel development
No waiting for robot be be built
Simulation and Debug
- Test your program without hardware
- What-if scenarios are easy
Advanced Control with StateFlow

5. Simulink Benefits Simple Programming Interface
- graphical drag and drop
More Efficient Design Flow
Parallel development
No waiting for robot be be built
Simulation and Debug
- Test your program without hardware
- What-if scenarios are easy
Advanced Control with StateFlow

6. Programming Joystick Control Your Robot Robot Program / Behavior
Programming involves describing a behavior or set of instructions for the robot.
Build your first program using Simulink.
Show how easy and quick it is.
Simple drive train and claw.
Robot Program / Behavior
2 Stick (Tank Style) control of wheels.
1 Button Gripper using servos.

7. Terminology Blocks – a pre-defined command or function
Library – a group of blocks from which to choose
Simulink Model – the robot program
Simulate/Run – test the program’s behavior on the computer
Generate Code – auto generation of C code from the Simulink model
Compile & Download – put the program on the robot

8. Creating a Robot Program
Compile/
Download

9. Demonstrate [Demonstration]
show how quickly this behavior can be modeled.
only a few clicks

10. Simulink Benefits Simple Programming Interface
- graphical drag and drop
More Efficient Design Flow
Parallel development
No waiting for robot be be built
Simulation and Debug
- Test your program without hardware
- What-if scenarios are easy
Advanced Control with StateFlow

11. Efficient Design Flow Old workflow New workflow Robot Robot
Locomotion
Arm/Gripper
Sensors
test & iterate
test & iterate
program
program
Robot
Team
Robot
Team
Robot
robot sharing
Robot

12. Simulink Benefits Simple Programming Interface
- graphical drag and drop
More Efficient Design Flow
Parallel development
No waiting for robot be be built
Simulation and Debug
- Test your program without hardware
- What-if scenarios are easy
Advanced Control with StateFlow

13. What is Simulation? Model of Behavior Stimulus Response
What if we do this?
Imitate the robot behavior
What will the robot do?
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process.
The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system.
So…what is Social Media?
It’s all of those ways that people communicate with one another online.
That’s all…
It started with , then message boards, then chat rooms, then blogging, then sharing multimedia, …and on and on.
It is THE hottest form of communication…right now

14. Demonstrate [Demonstration] show simulation blocks (stimulus/response)
- sliders
- gamepad block
- toggle block
- display
- scope
- field simulator
- stateflow highlighting (later)
What-if scenarios (e.g., wheel size)
Subsystems (grouping blocks)

15. Simulink Benefits Simple Programming Interface
- graphical drag and drop
More Efficient Design Flow
Parallel development
No waiting for robot be be built
Simulation and Debug
- Test your program without hardware
- What-if scenarios are easy
Advanced Control with StateFlow

16. Demonstrate [Demonstration] show 2010 example
- reading the 2010 Field Data port
- semi-autonomous operations

17. Additional Resources Weekly training webinars BEST Robotics website
See Announcements
BEST Robotics website
Menu: Participants -> Resources
Within Simulink – BEST UI
Direct Mathworks technical support button
Mathworks Representatives
Sandeep Hiremath,
Todd Atkins,

18. Making the Most of MathWorks Simulink
Thank You For Attending
Questions?
Don’t forget to fill out your session survey

19. Creating a Robot Program
**workflow slide**
**belong here??**
**use Sandeep’s slide?**
iteration
Model
Behavior
Library
Simulation
Design Blocks
Stimulus (Source) Blocks
Response (Sink) Blocks
Simulink Model
Testing without hardware
So…what is Social Media?
It’s all of those ways that people communicate with one another online.
That’s all…
It started with , then message boards, then chat rooms, then blogging, then sharing multimedia, …and on and on.
It is THE hottest form of communication…right now
Compile/Download
Generate Code