Team 1617: Autonomous Firefighting Robot Contest Katherine Drogalis, Electrical Engineering Zachariah Sutton, Electrical Engineering Chutian Zhang, Engineering Physics Advisor: Professor John Ayers

Overview Project Overview & Contest Background Mechanical Design & Layout Navigation Sensing & Routing Microcontrollers Flame Sensing & Extinguishing Timeline Budget

Autonomous Firefighting Robot Trinity International Robot Contest (April 1-3, 2016) User initiated, autonomous start & navigation Search for and extinguish burning candle Design can be extended to real life situations

Trinity International Robot Contest 8x8’ plywood maze Arbitrary start position Competing in 2 of 3 levels Timed trials Unique robot 31x31x27 cm robot Level 1 ArenaLevel 2 Arena

Test Arena

Round Polycarbonate Structure No rigid corners to bump walls Electrical insulating property Strong; Will not crack when cut Threaded rod for support Levels: Top to Bottom o Start button; LED; mic; kill-power plug; handle o Flame detection sensors; extinguisher o Microcontroller; laser scanner o Driving motors; control circuit; batteries Rechargeable DC batteries o Max 14.8 V o 5500 mAh

Actuators: DC Gear Motor w/ Encoder Velocity controlled by pulse-width modulation signal Faster/simpler than position control motors (steppers, servos) 12V - perfect for battery operation 100:1 gear ratio Count wheel rotations with encoders (feedback) 64 counts per rotor revolution (6400 counts per wheel revolution)

Navigation Sensing (Rangefinder) Options ○ Ultrasonic: cheap, low interference, low resolution ○ Infrared: cheap, range limited, interference prone, low resolution ○ Laser: long range, low/no interference, high resolution Scanner vs. Stationary ○ Stationary: cheaper, needs to be mounted ○ Scanner: set sample rate, configurable scan speed, built-in angular encoder Robopeak LIDAR ○ 2000 samples per second ○ Vary scan speed to control angular resolution ○ Get ~1 sample per degree with 5.5 Hz scan rate

Experimental Data

Considered: SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) o Requires a lot of processing (slow) Speed/ simplicity is important Now: Monte Carlo Localization with Grid Map o Start with uniformly distributed “samples” or guesses of robot’s pose o Apply motion to all samples o Compare laser scan observation to sample observations o Weight samples based on similarity to laser observation grid map o Resample from newly weighted sample distribution Routing/Navigation

Global MapMCL Simulation Source:

Microprocessor: Raspberry Pi o High processor speed (900 MHz) o Use for sampling, matching data Microcontroller: Arduino Mega o Use for controlling motors/collecting encoder data/flame sensing Need to establish communication between Pi and Arduino o USB serial communication o From Pi to Arduino: current location, suggested location o From Arduino to Pi: encoder data Computation

Block Diagram

Flame Sensing Options ○ Light: photoresistors/photodiodes, subject to external interference ○ Heat: IR non-contact sensing, must work at range of ~1 m RoBoard RM-G212 16X4 Thermal Array Sensor o produce a map of heat values o able to pick up the difference 1.5m away o low power consumption o 16 x 4 = 64 pixels o FOV: 60º horizontal, 16.4º vertical o 0.02 o C uncertainty

Experimental Setup

Experimental Flame Sensor Heat Map Heat measurements at distance of 1.5 m Heat measurements at distance of 0.2 m

Candle in total field of view Experimental Flame Sensor Heat Map

Flame Extinguishing Realistic: Compressed gas (CO 2 ) o Best option for large-scale fire - bonus points! o Bike tire inflator or duster o Extended nozzle at the front aligned with the sensors o Pointed directed at the candle flame Unrealistic: Fan o Will make a large-scale fire worse! o Controlled by Arduino o Fallback option

2015 Today Day Project Start 9/9/2015 Project Statement 9/28/2015 Proposal 11/4/2015 Design Review 11/9/2015 Contest Registration 12/2/2015 Final Presentation 12/9/2015 Final Report 12/11/2015 9/9/ /26/2015 Research 9/27/ /31/2015 Materials & Parts 10/11/ /18/2015 Flame Extinguishing 10/11/ /24/2015 Arena Design 10/25/ /14/2015 Model Design 11/15/ /18/2015 Model Build

Budget

Questions?