Lab

Recommended Tools

In addition to the resources that the course provides, students may find it useful to obtain the tools below:

  • wire cutter
  • wire stripper
  • needle nose pliers
  • screwdrivers
  • hex set (ball ends)
  • electrical tape
  • small scissors
  • a small file

Lab Resources

The Senior Design Lab is located at ZJUI room D225. This lab provides you access to various equipment, some spare parts, computers, and a space to work on your senior design project. In addition, course staff will make themselves available in this lab during their office hours to provide guidance on your project throughout the semester. Your weekly meetings with your TA will also likely be at this location.

It is our intention that this laboratory space provides you and your team with all the tools you would need to develop and test your project (within reason, of course!). If there is something that you require in the lab to complete your project that does not exist in the lab, talk to your TA and we will see how we can solve your issue.

Lab Rules

There are two overarching rules of working in the Senior Design Lab (and, frankly, any shared lab). First, be safe, and second, be courteous. Lab privileges will be revoked if you fail to complete the required laboratory safety training or if you break any of the lab rules. Specific points and examples of what we expect:

Breaking the rules or exhibiting bad laboratory etiquette will lead to a loss of points and/or revocation of laboratory access.

Lab Bench Reservations

We do not expect the lab to become so crowded such that finding a lab bench to work at becomes difficult. However, in the case that this does happen (particularly in semesters with very high enrollment), we will move to a Lab Bench Reservation system. Reserving a bench guarantees that spot for you, however each team may only book one lab bench at a time, and for a maximum of 4 hours per day.

If the lab needs to move to a reservation-based system, you will be notified ahead of time.

A few ground rules:

  1. You may use a lab bench (a) during a time for which you have it reserved or (b) any time during which it is not reserved in the system (on a first-come-first-served basis). However, if you are working at a bench that is unreserved and somebody reserves it using the online system, the group with the reservation gets the lab bench.
  2. There is a limit on the amount of time for which you can reserve benches in ZJUI D225. The limit is currently a total of 4 hours of total bench time in the lab per group per day (e.g., 2 hours at Bench A and 2 hours at Bench B would max out your team's reservations for the day). While this may seem restrictive, keep in mind that the course serves more than 30 groups in a typical semester and the lab has only 14 benches. Also keep in mind that you can work at a bench if it is unreserved.
  3. Some lab benches have specialized equipment at them, such as digital logic analyzers. Try to reserve the lab bench that has the equipment that you need.
  4. Cancel reservations that you will not need as soon as possible to give other groups a chance to reserve the lab bench. You can cancel a reservation up to 1 hour before time and not have it count against your daily allotment.
  5. Conflicts and/or reports of people not following these rules should be sent to your TA with the course faculty in copy.
  6. Above all, be courteous. Especially near the end of the semester, the lab will be more crowded and many teams are stressed. Clean up the lab bench when you are done with it. Start and end your sessions on time. Be patient and friendly to your peers and try to resolve conflicts professionally. If we notice empty lab benches that have been reserved, we will cancel your reservations and limit your ability to reserve lab benches in the future. Similarly, do not reserve more time than you will need. If we notice that you are frequently canceling reservations, we will limit your ability to reserve lab benches in the future. Finally, do not try to exploit the system and reserve a bench for 30 minutes every hour for eight hours. We will notice this and revoke your ability to reserve a bench.

Intelligent Texas Hold 'Em Robot

Xuming Chen, Jingshu Li, Yiwei Wang, Tong Xu

Featured Project

## Problem

Due to the severe pandemic of COVID-19, people around the world have to keep a safe social distance and to avoid big parties. As one of famous Poker games in the western world, the Texas Hold’em is also influenced by the pandemic and tends to turn to online game platform, which, unfortunately, brings much less real excites and fun to its players. We hope to develop a product to assist Poker players to get rid of the limit of time and space, trying to let them enjoy card games just as before the pandemic.

## Solution Overview

Our solution is to develop an Intelligent Texas Hold’em robot, which can make decisions in real Texas poker games. The robot is expected to play as an independent real player and make decisions in game. It means the robot should be capable of getting the information of public cards and hole cards and making the best possible decisions for betting to get as many chips as possible.

## Solution Components

-A Decision Model Based on Multilayer Neural Network

-A Texas Hold'em simulation model which based on traditional probabilistic models used for generating training data which are used for training the decision model

-A module of computer vision enabling game AI to recognize different faces and suits of cards and to identify the game situation on the table.

-A manipulation robot hand which is able to pick, hold and rotate cards.

-Several Cameras helping to movement of robot hand and the location of cards.

## Criterion for Success

- Training a decision model for betting using deep learning techniques (mainly reinforcement learning).

- Using cv technology to transform the information of public cards and hole cards and the chips of other players to valid input to the decision-making model.

- Using speech recognition technology to recognize other players’ actions for betting as valid input to the decision model.

Using the PTZ to realize the movement of the cameras which are used to capture the information of pokers and chips.

- Finish the mechanical design of an interactive robot, which includes actions like draw cards, move cards to camera, move chips and so on. Utilize MCU to control the robot.

Project Videos