Team Basics

Project Title: Rescue Robotics

Team Name: CARL!!!

URL: http://srproj.eecs.uci.edu/projects/rescue-robotics

Team Composition

1. Joseph Gonzalez

   • Major: Eletrical Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: Research with CARL Lab over summer, codes in C, Java, & Mathematica

   • Contributions: Hardware knowledge & Java coding experience

   • Team Role: Team Captain, Hardware

2. Noopur Siroya

   • Major: Aspiring Computer Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: Robotics for 2 year, Java programming, Python, C++

   • Contributions: Help program the CARL Rovers

   • Team Role: Hardware

3. Tracy Ogata

   • Major: Mechanical Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: Arduino expert, Solidworks, MatLab

   • Contributions: Programming & build more CARLs

   • Team Role: Software

4. Vicki Au

   • Major: Mechincal Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: 3 years of Solidworks, NX Unigraphics, Arduino, MatLab, 3D Printing

   • Contributions: building robots & programming

   • Team Role: Software

5. Haoran Yu

   • Major: Computer Science Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: Java, Andriod Studio, C language, made Quadcopter w/ Piixhawk Controller

   • Contributions:Embedded Systems & programming

   • Team Role: Software

6. Farah Arabi

   • Major: Eletrical Engineer

   • Skills & Experience: C, C++, Java, MatLab, Arduino, building RC devices

   • Contributions: Providing team with Java language help, getting used to Andriod Studio environment, & IOIO board

   • Team Role: Software

Mentor

Name: Jeff Krichmar

Major: Computer Science

•  We found Professor Krichmar through Senior Design Project listings. We think he is a good match because he is providing a lot of guidance for getting setup; he has shown us an online course to teach ourselves Android programming, the assitance of his graduate students, the use of his lab, CARL, to work.
• Professor Krichmar was the first faculty we contacted. We approached him by email through the MAE 189 Senior Projects website. He was very responsive and inviting to the project.

Project Idea

• The goal of the project is to have the CARL rovers work together to locate orange buckets ("disaster victims") in a field at the UCI Rescue Robotics competition. Specially, we want to find the most number of buckets in the least amount of time.
• The project idea was proposed by Professor Krichmar and is inspired by the growing application of rescue robotics.
• There are other school teams working on this idea for the competition in May. We are approaching the problem in the a different way by using the CARL rovers and a larger number of robots to search for buckets.
• We are well-versified in terms of skills in that we are a good balance of hardware and software people. Everyone will learn to program with Android to have a basic understanding of the robot code. The software people will mainly focus on writing and testing the code for the robots to communicate. The Hardware people will improve the design of the CARL rovers and also assist in testing them.
• The task of improving the CARL rovers involves understanding hardware interacts with software. We will need to be able to distinguish if problems that arise are due to the robot's circuitry or to an error in the code. Our collective knowledge and experience should be sufficient for the completion of the project.

Introduction

        The UCI Rescue Robotics Competition is an annual event hosted by UCI, Vital Link, and the Orange County School Districts to expose and provide STEM education to high school and middle school students through robotics. Competing teams design and build ground and/or aerial rescue robots to navigate outdoors and find the most victims. Our role in this competition is to develop the base robotics platforms on which the students base and adapt their designs on. This year we want to incorporate swarming capabilities to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of the robots at completing their task and benefit the students’ designs in the competition.

        This research also has a global relevance in disaster relief. Real world applications of this technology include searching for survivors after a disaster, sending real time updates after a disaster for the appropriate help, and deploying swarms of robots to replace human search and rescue teams when the aftermath is too dangerous (e.g. after a nuclear power plant explosion). Using rescue robots can decrease the time searching for survivors and increase the chances of survival in thousands of search and rescue operations performed worldwide each year.

Rover 5s and Carlorado

        The Carlorados and Rover 5s are similar except for their different robot bodies. Rover 5s are robots with a Rover 5 robot platform and a platform that holds all necessary electronics. These include a IOIO board with a bluetooth dongle, an Android phone, and a motor board. The search code is run on the Android phone and communicates with the IOIO board through the bluetooth dongle. The IOIO board is wired to communicate with the motor board which then controls the turning of the tank treads. The tank treads perform best on asphalt; they can be replaced with Dagu Wild Thumper Wheels for better performance in dirt and grassy areas.

Major Components

Wiring

Timeline

Fall Quarter

• Learn Android programming & OpenCV library
• Develop strategy for search and rescue
• Begin building new Rover 5s (awaiting LIDAR sensor)
• Fall Design Review - Dec. 8

Winter Quarter

• Establish network communication system - infrastructure to enable all robots to communicate & share data
• Develop and implement method for efficient data handling
• Optimize software for competition
• Winter Design Review

Spring Quarter

• Deploy and test swarm capabilities
• Practice and aid high school and Community College students with designs - April 21
• Prepare for UCI Search & Rescue Robotics Competition - May 12

Progress

Learn Android programming COMPLETED

• Project 1: Build a working Android application

Learn OpenCV library  IN PROGRESS

• Project 2: Android robotics app with Rover

Develop strategy for search and rescue  COMPLETED

• Identify mannequins using color blob detection: rectangular area, shadows from curvature
• Implement swarm capabilities to improve search efficiency: long range router

Build new Rover 5s with LIDAR  IN PROGRESS

• Begin mechanical construction
• Waiting for LIDAR sensor