Slashdot Mirror

Subaru sells a number of engines that aren't used in their cars. We used a four-stroke Robin Subaru V2 EH65 on the University of Alberta's "Polar Bear" robot ( http://www.igvc.org/design/reports/dr24.pdf & http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9189202946151470237# ). Their "industrial" engine line can be found here: http://robinamerica.com/industrial.aspx

Vex kits are expensive, but will teach your kids about everything. A cheaper option is just going to radio shack and buying a bit of everything (breadboard, LED, resistor kit, some wire). I'm at IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) and well that's what everyones robot mostly is anyway.

Seconding lego mindstorms, and get your kids into lego league-it's a great, fun experience for younger kids and a nice intro to robotics. I'd especially push that if you've got girls-get them into it early and get them comfortable around boys and a machine shop or they'll end up stuck with the pr and painting (maybe software if they're good) jobs even if they get into robotics.

Also, have them build their own box to run computer code-lego and microsoft are options to explore, pyro if you're dead set on FOSS. Once they've built it, they'll have a lot of fun testing it, plus they learn a lot of coding fundamentals.

I have worked on a university project that is developing an autonomous robotic vehicle. The project is the Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project (ARVP). Our team consists of a number of undergraduate and graduate engineering and computer science students. We participate annually in the IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition). The IGVC is a relatively simple challenge: navigate an obstacles course delineated by a pair of white lines marking the boundaries of the "road" and avoid obstacles such as traffic barrels. Max. speed is 5mph. Sounds simple right? Even a two-year-old could do it crawling.

Wrong. The IGVC has run for over 10 years, and in the last three years not a single team has completed the autonomous challenge. Teams from all over the world from prestigious universities compete, but autonomous navigation is not easy.

The first challenge is hardware: high-quality sensory equipment is expensive. Witness the thousands of dollars costs to purchase laser rangefinders, let alone radar or LIDAR. As well, computing power plays a large role, particularly at the speeds the Grand Challenge vehicles running.

The second challenge is software: It is not easy to write consistent vision algorithms. For example, simply the shadows cast off of trees on a sunny day can easily throw off line-recognition algorithms. I cannot imagine the difficulties that teams in the Grand Challenge experienced trying to recognize potholes and ditches.

The third challenge is reliability: All systems must work nearly perfectly together under a variety of conditions. The conditions at the Grand Challenge are far from ideal, and are in fact extremely difficult. The vehicles had to negotiate with dust, ditches and holes, overpasses, sand hazards, water hazards, fences and other obstacles.

All of these factors, which are quite easily dealt with in the amazing system known as the human mind, are very difficult for an autonomous vehicle. To be honest, I feel that seven miles is an extraordinary accomplishment under the race conditions. Few individuals honestly expected that the race would be completed.

Note: The most up-to-date info is in my /. journal, so I suggest that you start there.

Our team's website
I am afraid that it is rather lacking on updates and was done very poorly. I need to get it up-to-date and looking better. It was put online very quickly by request of a sponsor. I promise that I will update it and put new pictures up, since the pictures our framegrabber can now take really puts the one on the front page to shame. I also plan to upload the source code to our vision and navigation systems as well as a technical overview of the robot itself. Perhaps a trouble shooting guide would help as well to let aspiring engineers learn from our mistakes. Very funny stories, those are.
Having trouble finding significant support within our university, our robotics team is slowly weaning itself away from the university and competitive mode, and are developing into a more independent group, especially since I graduated and our two other members will shortly as well. We do not receive large funding from the university, and faced with having to pay for our "toys" out-of-pocket while working within university policy, we will likely eventually take this project in new directions.

The IGVC website
This is one of the competitions that we compete in. It is more driven by the Department of Defense and the automotive industry, and is more lenient in its acceptance of participants than the DARPA one is. Our university, however, competes in various robotics competitions. Some are for autonomous robots (such as firefighting robots and military-grade mobile ones) and others for general robots that can perform different tasks. Heck, we even have (or had, rather) a battlebots team.

I have put a small article in my slashdot journal and will be posting news from time to time there. I will also be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. (I enabled comments) I have added pictures to the journal so I really suggest that you start there. :)


Hope that helps. :) Have a nice day.