Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Computer Engineering
Andrew Bolding - Virginia State University
Co-Author(s): Anthony Rodgers and Joshua Licata
The purpose of this project is to design and develop an autonomous robot to participate in the IEEE Southeast Conference Hardware Competition which will be held in April 2017 in Charlotte, NC. This Conference will not provide an opportunity to present lessons learned from the design process to the students. The ERN Conference will provide an opportunity to present the design process as well as experiences on teambuilding, engineering practice, ethics, and responsibility of conducts in a project management. In this project a fully functional autonomous robot will be designed and developed. The robot will navigate amongst an arena, completing challenges in the form of four stages. The micro purpose of the project is to design a robot, but the macro purpose could be to build a prototype of a robot which can be used for other reasons such as being able to decode information given to breach a physical wall of security, being able to defend itself if in danger, or being able to fulfill household needs. The design criterion is established by the IEEE and it is: the robot will be under 12” x 12” x 12” in size to fit in the starting cubicle before the match. The robot will be autonomous, meaning that the robot has to be able to navigate by itself and not by a wired or wireless controlled communication process. It cannot cause harm and contain explosives or flammable liquids. The robot will have a clearly defined start switch to be pressed when the competition is under way. It is also recommended that the robot has an emergency stop button in case something goes wrong. Stage One has the robot decoding a secret code amongst five components to be used in a later stage; each component stands for a digit. The robot will be able to decode the code and be able to access it from its memory to be used later. Stage Two has the robot commencing in a lightsaber duel. A 3” lightsaber will be set up on the wall; the lightsaber will emit an electromagnetic force when it is activated for 30 seconds of a duel. Our robot will have its own lightsaber which can pick up the electromagnetic force emitted and then strike successfully. When the lightsaber is successfully stricken, it will vibrate and light up for half a second: blue meaning success and red meaning failure. Stage Three places our robot in a situation in which it needs to access the code received from Stage One to break the code to breach the security of the wall and save the princess. Our robot will have an attachment that is able to turn the combination lock knob as the knob has to be turned clockwise n amount of times for the first digit, then counterclockwise n amount of times for the second digit, then reoccurring until the code wall’s security is breached. The Final Stage is the grand closing of the competition. The robot will be able to get three Nerf N-Strike Dart Missiles into a portal either by navigating the levels that increase in height or shooting the missiles into the 6×6”, 48” wide portal that is 12” above the wall. Our robot will either have bigger, more durable wheels to navigate up the platforms or have a mechanism that is able to shoot the missiles far enough with the right projection.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation
Faculty Advisor: Ali Ansari, aansari@vsu.edu
Role: We have started putting the robot and a simulation arena for the Southeast Conference already.