As the years have gone by we have seen an increase in the use of autonomous robots in many different fields. They've been used for food delivery, vacuuming, lawn mowing, assembly line manufacturing, and so much more. It's the autonomous nature of these robots that make it a rising interest in Computer Science. Unfortunately, higher education institutions have not been able to keep up with this rising trend due to a lack of non-proprietary software and hardware. There are non-trivial simulators and limited functionality robots in the classroom setting, but there is great limitation in thse provided tools compared to a more hands-on approach. What if we had a higher standard for robotics software? What if there was a way to integrate more of this at an "affordable" cost? When we say affordable, it's important to denote that this means affordable in terms of the average household, not that of an academic organization.
Who?
What?
Why?
More about the Client
Our sponsor, Michael E. Leverington, is an assistant teaching
professor at Northern Arizona University involved in both Computer
Science research as well as teaching beginner and advanced courses.
Needless to say, he sees this problem as untapped potential for what
Computer Science education could possibly be. To solve this issue, he
has been attempting for years to create both a robot capable of being
modular in its use and programmability and modular software
implementing a basic navigational component.
More about the Hardware
Michael recently came up with
the idea of using the IRobot Create 3 to help test the navigational
software components. The Create 3 is a small circular robot with
similar sensors and capabilities to that of a Roomba vacuum, a common
robot found in society today. The Create 3 is a relatively cheap
(under $500) solution, and easily accessible to those with computer
access. It comes standard with basic mobility actuators and a
variety of sensors, all which can be programmed to complete user
decided tasks. Team F.E.A.T. is dedicated to creating a robotics
platform that can be programmed as needed to a variety of similarly
functioning robots, which we'll elaborate more on later. Aside from
creating a modular platform, it will show proof of concept and
function as a tour guide for the 2023-2024 academic year at Northern
Arizona University. See More Info for details on the Create3 Robot.
Where to Begin?
We begin this challenge by looking at the previous versions of the
project which have ended in failure to see what lessons we could
learn. One previous team did not actually have access to a functioning
robot, yet this team was the one that came the closest to
accomplishing the goal. Of course with the addition of the Create 3
robot, the project does vary in multiple aspects, but the major
milestone continues to be the software navigational component. This
change, while useful for F.E.A.T., is not the only problem the project
has encountered in past iterations. Multiple teams' failures have
stemmed from many areas, but the biggest and most glaring issue seems
to be with their original feasibility reports. More specifically it
was their focus on one specific aspect of their robots sensor
capabilities to control navigation. So where do we begin? First we had get familiar with the
Create3 Robot