introduction
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Engaging Undergraduate Students with Robotic Design Projects James O. Hamblen School of ECE, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250 [email protected]. Introduction. Have used robots in three large undergraduate classes at Georgia Tech for the past six years. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Engaging Undergraduate Students with Robotic
Design Projects
James O. Hamblen
School of ECE, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250
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Introduction• Have used robots in three large undergraduate
classes at Georgia Tech for the past six years.• Wanted engaging robotic design projects for
undergraduate students.• CmpE and CS students need a mixture of hardware
and software design work in their undergraduate projects.
• Funds are limited for schools and they also need to support large numbers of students.
• Robot kits and embedded computer boards funded by recent Microsoft Embedded RFP
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Overall Robot Project Approach
• Select a Robot Base• Add computer & control electronics• Select & interface new sensors• Develop hardware & software to
control robot to perform assigned task
• Expensive parts are reused by students
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Options for a Robot Base
• Construct one from scratch– Can take too long for student projects and become an ME
project
• Hobbyist Robot Kits– Most come with a very limited microcontroller and tend to be
small
• Low-cost R/C Toys– Most toys are available only a few months
• Hobbyist R/C Models– Need more space to steer and maneuver
• Small Low-Cost Commercial Robot Bases – More expensive, but can also be reused
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A simple low-cost robot base built using two modified R/C servos,
a round plastic disk, R/C car battery pack, and an FPGA-computer
board. We used this robot in our first digital laboratory course.
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Students modified this R/C toy truck to create an autonomous mine detection robot by adding an eBox II
running Win CE.
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This R/C hobbyist Hummer was converted to an autonomous robot with vision tracking capabilities by
students using a computer board and a CMOS Camera. Hobbyist R/C models use a standard digital PCM control
signal.
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This Amigobot commercial robot was originally designed to be remotely controlled using a PC with a serial cable. An eBox II running Win CE was added to control this mail delivery robot by a student design
team for their sr. design project.
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Students used an X86 embedded computer board and .NET Framework to develop this robot convoy. The lead robot is teleoperated and the others follow automatically.
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Left: The ER1 is a low-cost commercial robot base designed to carry a notebook PC. The ER1 uses USB for motor control and sensor interfaces.Right: A student project built using the ER1 that uses Sonar to map a room and a USB camera to send back images.
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Selecting a Computer to control the Robot
• Would like a processor with enough speed and memory for all student projects and a wide variety of I/O options to interface motors and sensors
• Use a commercial embedded computer board or a notebook PC
• Power consumption is a concern - runs off batteries• Complex robots will need an embedded OS
– Boot from Flash - No Hard Drive? - Multithreaded
• Wireless networking support useful for communication and remote control of the robot
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The low-cost eBox II SOC X86 PC runs Win CE from Flash and has the common PC I/O
options
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This Arcom Olympus embedded computer board uses standard X86 PC chip technology and runs
Windows CE or XP Embedded using Flash memory.
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Low-Cost Sensor Options for Robots
Sensors from left to right: Line following, IR proximity, shaft encoder, GPS, Sonar, IR distance, Electronic Compass, CMOS Camera.
These sensors all have digital outputs and are not hard to interface.
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Conclusions• Robot projects help maintain a high level of student
interest. They motivate the students to work harder on the design, implementation, and testing of their projects.
• Using embedded computer boards to control the robot can provide students with a significant RTOS, C/C++, networking, and GUI programming experience.
• Microsoft’s Hardware Empowerment Program helps with educational discounts on embedded computer boards: http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/community/academic/collaboration/default.aspx
• Academic Community could use a new educational robot kit with more capabilities at a reasonable price point.
Examples from the presentation are available on-line at:
http://www.ece.gatech.edu/~hamblen/4006/projects