Little Bo Peep has taken up engineering. Tired of suffering through a search in the wilderness for her sheep, Bo Beep has designed a robot that will home in on her lost livestock. The robot’s goal? Get little lost Barclay and Beatrice back to the barn as quickly as possible.
Each semester, students in the senior project course in ECE face a different design challenge. In Dr. Lusina’s Fall 2013 course they need to design a robot capable of navigating terrain, receiving a homing signal from a beacon, picking up a golf ball from the beacon and returning to its initial coordinates.
Team nine’s Bo Beep robot uses IR sensors to locate a beacon and hex numbers to identify the beacon, allowing the robot to distinguishing between the two sheep, Barclay and Beatrice. The robot returns home by tracking it’s own movements within an XY coordinate system and using an algorithm to find the fastest route to return to its initial position.
Team nine preparing robot and beacon for the first heat (left to right Audun Lie Indergaard, Logan Buchy, Elion Thanasko, Theodore Twist and Rudi Plesch)
Logan describes this project course as an important counterpoint to more theory-based courses in the program.
“Working on a problem outside the simulator, a real-world problem, requires a larger set of skills.”
They added some risk with their approach to the project looking for the greatest reward. Each student in the team took on a particular responsibility for the project, but they didn’t automatically move towards the areas they were best at. Instead, they took on the aspects of the project that most interested them and offered them the best learning challenge. Throughout this process Rudi said communication and documentation were key to their success.
What was the best part of the project for this team?
“Seeing our robot succeed for the first time. This project was particularly rewarding because we were all responsible for the outcome. Coming into the lab and seeing all the teams working together and really caring about what they are doing made us feel a real sense of camaraderie. It was a good way to get to know everyone in my Department, all my classmates as well as my teammates.”