Engaging Undergraduate Students with Robotic

Design Projects

 James O. Hamblen

School of ECE, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250

hamblen@ece.gatech.edu

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

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

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

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.

Students modified this R/C toy truck to create an autonomous mine detection robot by adding an eBox II

running Win CE.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The low-cost eBox II SOC X86 PC runs Win CE from Flash and has the common PC I/O

options

This Arcom Olympus embedded computer board uses standard X86 PC chip technology and runs

Windows CE or XP Embedded using Flash memory.

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.

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