PREPARING FOR HUMAN EXPLORATION OF MARS
Graduate Mechatronics Robot Project
The mission of the Mars exploration robot was to collect simulated supply drops (tennis balls) and store them in a storage container in under one minute. The container and robot had to stay within a certain volume but had no weight requirement, the robot had to be self-contained and autonomous.
The robot needed to locate, move towards the ball, pick up the ball, search again for more balls, then find the container and deploy the balls into a container. To accomplish all these tasks, we utilized a Raspberry Pi board and camera to locate and track the balls. After a few design iterations, the team decided the ball collection mechanism should use a spinning roller wheel to drive the balls to the top collector. The balls could then be released with a gate into the top of the passive (non-electronic) container; this kept the container design simple. Along with helping brainstorm the container and ball collecting design, I modeled the robot and the design iterations throughout the project. I was also the main team member building and testing the robot while the others designed the electronics, wrote the software, and ran analysis. As the team leader, I also managed the team schedule to make sure milestones were met keeping the project on track.