Undergraduate Research Projects

Undergraduate Research Project: Freeing Stuck Vehicles

Rosa, Pyke, and Balkcom

Wheeled robots get stuck. We have begun an exploration of increasing vehicle mobility in soft terrain by using the wheels to dig. We have explored two behaviors: oscillation of wheel-spin direction to dig out stuck wheels, and the use of controlled landslides to remove a hill that is too steep for the robot to cross. The work is preliminary and empirical, but suggests promising directions in which robot capabilities may be expanded.

We have implemented two open-loop escape techniques. The robot has escaped from being buried in sand using the oscillation technique. The robot has also climbed a sand dune by creating a pass shallow enough for it to cross using the digging technique.

Movies: Digging with Wheels

AVI video of Nelson Rosa and Josh Pyke's wheeled robot escaping from a sandtrap. (44MB)

Undergraduate Research Project: Toy Climbing Robot

Bell and Balkcom

We built a simple toy climbing robot in order to explore problems related to grasping, path planning, and robot control. The robot is capable of climbing a wall of pegs either under remote control, or on the basis of a set of pre-recorded keyframes. In addition, the robot can climb certain peg configurations using a cyclic gait. All communications are sent through an infrared connection, and the tether to the robot consists only of two power wires. Due to the minimalist, non-prehensile grasping method the robot is capable of actively removing error while climbing, which is necessary to enable the robot to climb open-loop in the absence of environmental sensing.

Movies: Toy Climbing Robot

QuickTime video of Matt Bell's robot climbing in real-time. (39MB)

QuickTime video of the same climb sped up 3 times. (13MB)