Thesis Design Project: Done

This past Sunday was the final competition to the IBM judges for my team’s thesis design project. The project consisted of making an autonomous robot (out of Lego) that would go into a network, and rescue hallow eggs.

There were 2 parts to the project. The first is the graphical user interface, which uses a map of the network to determine execution paths, trasmit/receive with the robot, etc. The second part is designing the actual robot. Both components had a lot of effort put into them, and collectively we are very proud of the final product.

Our company name was MBI (MicroBot Initiative) and the product name was nexSAR (Next Generation Search and Rescue). Highlights of the finished product?

• Capable of rescuing 3 eggs in under 25 seconds (using the network provided).
• Custom designed ‘stay straight’ algorithm, which polls light sensors to remain centered in the hallway.
• Upon exiting the network, the robot uploads its log, and the GUI creates a VRML (3D) log re-enactment. This is complete with victim voices, which get louder as the robot nears.
• Ubuntu Live CD. Just put the CD in the CD drive, reboot, and all the software you need is ready to go. We have a live CD for both PowerPC and for Intel.
• USB Rescue Key. Capable of booting to DSL (Damn Small Linux) straight from a USB drive. This also has all the software pre-loaded and ready to go.
• Complete GUI with map editor and path generation.

Here are the slides that we used in our final presentation.
The slides use 3 videos of the Robot in action – Video1 – Video2 – Video3 – (sorry 2 of the videos are large ~50mb).

Update: Final photos of the Robot (taken March 28/06) can be seen here.
Update: The Robot Java code can be downloaded here (April 4/06).
Update: The videos above have been uploaded to Google Video, you can see them here (July 2/06).

Here is a screen shot of the GUI:

Here is a screen shot of the VRML log re-enactment:

Have a second? Check out this great Canadian Health & Living Store based in Toronto

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Coffee, IBM, McMaster, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Print this post.