Project Proposal: Student: Rowan Pivetta Supervisor: Dr Nasser Asgari

 The Competition 2013  Milestones  Research  Robotic Design  Obstacle Detection  Navigation  Proposal

 Competition run by National Instruments ◦ Supply products to engineering industry  April to late September 2013  24 universities from Australia & New Zealand  Flinders University team ◦ Joel Cottrell, Joshua Renfrey ◦ Rowan Pivetta and Peter Cook (BENG Mechanical)  Design, build and program an autonomous robotic vehicle  Fully utilises the NI Single board RIO  Program the sbRIO through NI LabView ◦ A graphical development software package

 Scenario: A hazardous mining environment  Search and retrieval of precious metals  Competition involves ◦ Integration – Robot design and sbRIO ◦ Task – Speed vs time ◦ Obstacle Avoidance ◦ Object Detection and Handling ◦ Navigation  90% of robot control must be done by single board RIO and programmed in LabView

 Navigate from home position to the mining field  Distinguish the golden cubes from the rubble grey cubes  Pick up and transport up to 4 golden cubes to the depot  Complete the task in under 3 minutes without incurring any penalties. ◦ Hitting walls ◦ Picking up rubble Mining Area Depot Home

 Unknown obstacles around mining area  Unknown position of the cubes in mining area  Unknown openings into mining area  One point for localisation ◦ A IR emitting tower with fixed co-ordinates Mining Area Depot Home ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

 Milestone 1 – 29 th April ◦ Completion of NI LabView online training course ◦ Demonstrate control of a motor or a sensor ◦ Complete written project proposal  Milestone 2 – 3 rd June ◦ Prototype design with obstacle avoidance  Milestone 3 – 22 nd July ◦ Final design and demonstration of navigation and localisation  Milestone 4 – 26 th August ◦ Demonstrate object handling, navigation, localisation and obstacle avoidance  Competition – Week of 23 rd September

 Competition run in 2012: ◦ Search and rescue mission  Understand competition ◦ Grid pattern reference ◦ Height obstacles ◦ Colour block detection  Check milestones ◦ The type of hardware used ◦ The sensors and structures used ◦ Assessing different designs  Group discussions

 Four grippers ◦ Design to maximum efficiency  Internal block storage  Tip-up truck ◦ Allow easier transportation  Circular vs rectangular footprint  Holonomic vs conventional drive  Final design still under consideration  Collaborative decision

 Sensors are the eyes and ears ◦ Robot decisions based on sensor readings  Strategic positioning ◦ Detect walls and height obstacles ◦ No interference between robotic components  More sensors provides more information allowing better decision making  Does to much hinder performance ◦ Increase weight and power drain ◦ Constrained to capabilities of sbRIO ◦ Further complex sensor fusing algorithms

 Infra-red or Ultrasonic range finding sensors  Camera can detect the edges of the obstacles  LIDAR gives more information about the obstacles ◦ Can be used to determine exact boundaries  Combining camera and LIDAR can distinguish between the obstacles and the smaller blocks IR Range Finder LIDAR Camera

 Navigation and localisation is a difficult problem to solve in robotics  Combine all sensor information  Techniques ◦ Markov localisation ◦ Extended Kalman Filter  Robot prediction vs measured position ◦ Simultaneous Localization And Mapping ◦ Follow the right wall

 Design the robot for what is best suited for the specifications of the competition ◦ Unique wheel configuration ◦ Unique navigation solution ◦ Unique robotic design

 National Instruments, 2013,  NIARC, September 2012, waT1BaTSi9Xxltw&index=  Bayuk, R. “A comparison of Robot Navigation Algorithms for an Unknown Goal”,