Engineering Commons^™

Dual-Axis Precision Imager, Gary Huarng

Computer Engineering

The Dual-Axis Precision Imager (DAPI) is a drawing robot that processes images and draws them on a whiteboard. The system has two modes: a Sobel filter mode that finds the edges of the input image with a Sobel filter, and a tri-tone grayscale mode that approximates the shading of the input image with the colors white, gray, and black. The DAPI consists of an Arduino-controlled XY gantry system with a pen mounted on the gantry head, and a Processing IDE program that processes the original image, converts the processed image into gantry instructions, and sends them to the Arduino for …

The Poly Rover Project, Eric Lei, Alla Alamsi, Neil Patel, Diego Ramos

Computer Engineering

The Polyver Project is an idea born from the curiosity of a few students who wondered what the interaction between a physical person and a rover as the host of random internet users would look like. It is also an experiment to enhance the exploration of real world sites in real time while also having the power of interaction.

The goal of the Polyver Project is to build the foundation for a system that can serve as the interface between the internet and a fleet of rovers. Each rover is equipped with at least a camera, microphone, and a speaker …

Developing A Miniature Smart Boat For Marine Research, Michael Isaac Eirinberg

Computer Engineering

This project examines the development of a smart boat which could serve as a possible marine research apparatus. The smart boat consists of a miniature vessel containing a low-cost microcontroller to live stream a camera feed, GPS telemetry, and compass data through its own WiFi access point. The smart boat also has the potential for autonomous navigation. My project captivated the interest of several members of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s (Cal Poly SLO) Marine Science Department faculty, who proposed a variety of fascinating and valuable smart boat applications.

Rchex: A Radio-Controlled Hexapod, Dominique Sayo

Computer Engineering

rcHex is a radio-controlled hexapod with 18 degrees of freedom, capable of positional and rotational body adjustment as well as omnidirectional travel at variable speeds using three common gaits. Its general-purpose design accessible to hobbyists makes rcHex an platform for further development, whether it be experimentation in advanced robotic movement or retrofitting sensors to utilize technologies such as computer vision and artificial intelligence. This report explores some of the design intricacies of hexapod movement, including gait sequencing and the application of inverse kinematics to multi-jointed limbs.

Autonomous Butter Robot, David Chau, Michael Hegglin

Computer Engineering

Don’t you wish your butter would come to you? Well now it can with the patented Michael and David butter robot! Based on an idea from a TV show, our team set out to see if a similar robot was possible to make in real life. The objective was simple. Can we make a small table sized robot that can bring a person butter using image detection software? With that question in mind we set out buying our components. We wanted to keep it small, so we looked up devices that could do simple image processing and from there we …

Reasoning From Point Clouds, Joey Wilson

Computer Engineering

Over the past two years, 3D object detection has been a major area of focus across industry and academia. This is primarily due to the difficulty of learning data from point clouds. While camera images are fixed size and can therefore be easily trained on using convolution, point clouds are unstructured series of points in three dimensions. Therefore, there is no fixed number of features, or a structure to run convolution on. Instead, researchers have developed many ways of attempting to learn from this data, however there is no clear consensus on what is the best method, as each has …

Weight Controlled Electric Skateboard, Zachary Barram, Carson Bertozzi, Vishnu Dodballapur

Computer Engineering

Technology and the way that humans interact is becoming more vital and omnipresent with every passing day. However, human interface device designers suffer from the increasingly popular “designed for me or people like me” syndrome. This design philosophy inherently limits accessibility and usability of technology to those like the designer. This places severe limits of usability to those who are not fully able as well as leaves non-traditional human interface devices unexplored. This project set out to explore a previously uncharted human interface device, on an electric skateboard, and compare it send user experience with industry leading human interface devices.

Labeling Paths With Convolutional Neural Networks, Sean Wallace, Kyle Wuerch

Computer Engineering

With the increasing development of autonomous vehicles, being able to detect driveable paths in arbitrary environments has become a prevalent problem in multiple industries. This project explores a technique which utilizes a discretized output map that is used to color an image based on the confidence that each block is a driveable path. This was done using a generalized convolutional neural network that was trained on a set of 3000 images taken from the perspective of a robot along with matching masks marking which portion of the image was a driveable path. The techniques used allowed for a labeling accuracy …

The Soul Annoyed Robot: A Senior Project Report, Dayton Andrew Muxlow, Christian Johansen

Computer Engineering

Our goal for this senior project was to create a competitive robot designed to com- pete in Roborodentia 2019. Our project started during the Winter 2019 quarter, and ended with the competition on May 18, 2019. During that time, we developed an accurate solenoid shooting mechanism, an elevated conveyor belt to carry poker chips, and a servo arm to scoop in stacks of poker chips. These hardware compo- nents were attached to a circular differential-drive wooden base designed to be easy to control. We also planned out our match strategy and implemented this strategy with software written in C/Wiring to …

Planr.: Planar Learning Autonomous Navigation Robot, Gabrielle S. Santamorena, Daniel Kasman, Jesus Mercado, Ben Klave, Andrew Weisman, Anthony Fortner

Computer Engineering

PLANR is a self-contained robot capable of mapping a space and generating 2D floor plans of a building while identifying objects of interest. It runs Robot Operating System (ROS) and houses four main hardware components. An Arduino Mega board handles the navigation, while an NVIDIA Jetson TX2, holds most of the processing power and runs ROS. An Orbbec Astra Pro stereoscopic camera is used for recognition of doors, windows and outlets and the RPLiDAR A3 laser scanner is able to give depth for wall detection and dimension measurements. The robot is intended to operate autonomously and without constant human monitoring …

Localization Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shannon D. Fong

Computer Engineering

With the increased accessibility to powerful GPUs, ability to develop machine learning algorithms has increased significantly. Coupled with open source deep learning frameworks, average users are now able to experiment with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to solve novel problems. This project sought to train a CNN capable of classifying between various locations within a building. A single continuous video was taken while standing at each desired location so that every class in the neural network was represented by a single video. Each location was given a number to be used for classification and the video was subsequently titled locX. These …

Baseball Shagger, Anthony Velasquez, Nick Walker, Nathaniel Kai Paresa

Computer Engineering

The purpose of our project is to allow players to hit baseballs on a baseball field and not have to worry about picking them up. By combining our knowledge of software and hardware, we developed the first design of a robot that “shags” baseballs. Our endeavor was only partially successful. The device was tested on grass, turf, and concrete. The motors did not have enough torque to get moving on grass. The device faired better on turf where it could move, but was quite jerky as the motor drive needed to be high to start moving, but once it was …

Roborodentia Final Report, Trevor James Gesell, Zeph Colby Nord, Mitchell Tyler Myjak

Computer Engineering

The Senior Project consisted of competing in Roborodentia, a competition in which groups build robots to complete a particular task. This event took place at the Cal Poly Open House on Saturday, April 12th, 2018. For the competition, the robot was to collect Nerf balls from supply tubes raised approximately 7” from the board and shoot them into nets placed along the opposite side of the course. The design, manufacture, and testing of the robot began the first week of Cal Poly winter quarter and lasted until the day of the competition.

Senior Project - Roborodentia Robot, Nicholas Alexander Ilog

Computer Engineering

This project includes an autonomous robot capable of dispensing balls from a dispenser mounted on a wall and shooting the balls through targets five to eight feet away. The robot can hold up to five balls at a time and shoots balls one by one at targets.

Roborodentia, Bryan D. Hendricks

Computer Engineering

This project is an autonomous robot, designed to perform a series of basic tasks without any human input. It’s based on the 2018 Roborodentia competition, in which teams of students design and build a small (roughly 1 square foot) robot that collects small foam spheres from vertical tubes on the edges of a table-sized arena, and shoot them into goals across the field. The more foam spheres the robot makes into the goals after a 3 minute time period, the more points they get. The challenge is doing so autonomously, without any human input after the initial timer for the …

Darling, Robot For Roborodentia 2018, Michael Le, Steven Liu

Computer Engineering

For our senior project, our group decided to build a robot to participate in Roborodentia 2018, an annual robotics competition overlooked by Professor Seng that takes place during open house. When taking into consideration the classes that Computer Engineering students had to have taken and the skills that we have developed throughout our time here on campus, a robotics project seemed to be an appropriate culmination of both the technical and non-technical skills that we have acquired.

Autonomous Navigation And Mapping Using Lidar, Steven E. Alsalamy, Ben C. Foo, Garrett C. Frels

Computer Engineering

The goal of this project was to make a fully autonomous robot, capable of mapping its surroundings and navigating through obstacles. This was done through the use of a chassis fitted with tracks and two motors, a lidar, a compass, and a Raspberry Pi. The robot also contains two batteries and is self powered. Encoders are used on the motors in order to track the distance traveled for more precise mapping and movements.

Real Time And High Fidelity Quadcopter Tracking System, Tyler Mckay Hall

Computer Engineering

This project was conceived as a desired to have an affordable, flexible and physically compact tracking system for high accuracy spatial and orientation tracking. Specifically, this implementation is focused on providing a low cost motion capture system for future research. It is a tool to enable the further creation of systems that would require the use of accurate placement of landing pads, payload acquires and delivery. This system will provide the quadcopter platform a coordinate system that can be used in addition to GPS.

Field research with quadcopter manufacturers, photographers, agriculture and research organizations were contact and interviewed for information …

Farmbot Rfid Integration, Laura R. Swart

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to assist the company FarmBot improve their product by adding RFID tracking to the FarmBot robot. RFID tracking will allow the robot to select and pick up tool heads without any user interference.

The Following Robot, Juan D. Cerda, Matthew S. Kwan, Vi M. Le

Computer Engineering

The objective of this project is to design, build, and test an autonomous robot with an associated Android application. The robot uses on board inertial measurement sensors (magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope) and coordinates itself through Bluetooth communication with the similar built­in measurement sensors on the Android phone to mimic and follow movement. The Following Robot incorporates the same basic movement functionality as a typical RC car. The robot follows the user’s phone through an application on one’s phone. This application accesses the phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope data and translates into appropriate conversions. Methods of tracking and calculating distance or angular displacement …

Modeling Autonomous Vehicles Through Radio Controlled Cars, Eva S. Chen

Computer Engineering

Autonomous vehicles have a lot of potential in improving people’s everyday lives. They could reduce congestion, reduce collisions, enhance mobility, and more. But with these benefits come security and privacy risks. In order to research and test some of these risks, we are building a set of scale autonomous cars that can model autonomous and collaborative behaviors. One such behaviour would be platooning, where a group of vehicles can travel closely together at high speeds by following a lead car. We are doing this with various sensors and control algorithms to allow for future modularity.

Software Updates To A Multiple Autonomous Quadcopter Search System (Maqss), Jared Speck, Toby Chan

Computer Engineering

A series of performance-based and feature implementation software updates to an existing multiple vehicle autonomous target search system is outlined in this paper. The search system, MAQSS, is designed to address a computational power constraint found on modern autonomous aerial platforms by separating real-time and computationally expensive tasks through delegation to multiple multirotor vehicles. A Ground Control Station (GCS) is also described as part of the MAQSS system to perform the delegation and provide a low workload user interface. Ultimately, the changes to MAQSS noted in this paper helped to improve the performance of the autonomous search mission, the accuracy …

Animatronic Kinect Bear, Christopher J. Barth, Luis Manjarrez, Emily Lopez

Computer Engineering

The objective of the project was to build an interactive robotic bear through the application of Computer Engineering related software and hardware concepts. Utilizing the body recognition features of XBos One Kinect, the bera will be able to mimic a user's motions in real time.

Robostock: Autonomous Inventory Tracking, Drew Christian Balthazor

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Electronic Deer Warning System, David Zhuo, Anlang Lu

Computer Engineering

Deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) are extremely dangerous, often injuring or even killing drivers. Unfortunately, this form of automotive accident is commonplace in the United States. According to the NHTSA, DVCs result in 200 human deaths a year.2

Despite these deadly incidents, there currently are no deployed federal or state systems for preventing DVCs. There are many consumer electronic deer deterrent products, but their long-term effectiveness is questionable.3 In fact, there does not appear to be much research into electronic deer deterrent systems. Aside from constant audio output and electric shock, no other means of electronic deterrent exist. Even if fixed deterrents …

Android Drone: Remote Quadcopter Control With A Phone, Aubrey John Russell

Computer Engineering

The purpose of the “Android Drone” project was to create a quadcopter that can be controlled by user input sent over the phone’s Wi-Fi connection or 4G internet connection. Furthermore, the purpose was also to be able to receive live video feedback over the internet connection, thus making the drone an inexpensive option compared to other, equivalent drones that might cost thousands of dollars. Not only that, but the Android phone also has a host of other useful features that could be utilized by the drone: this includes GPS, pathing, picture taking, data storage, networking and TCP/IP, a Java software …

Autonomous Golf Cart Firmware, Gerik Kubiak

Computer Engineering

The Autonomous Golf Cart Project is a project sponsored by the Cal Poly Robotics Club. The multidisciplinary team is adding sensors and electronics to a regular golf cart with the goal to drive the golf cart around campus without and human input. This task requires a plethora of hardware and firmware to control that hardware. The firmware provides an interface for higher level software to then control the hardware and therefore drive the golf cart. This report is focused on the hardware modifications and the firmware used in order to drive the golf cart from a computer.

Senior Project: Control System For An Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle, Tyler Mau, Joseph Mahoney

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Story Of Beyoncé: The Roborodentia 2016 Contestant, Brandon Arnold, Mana Kulkarni, Aaron Newberg, Jon Sleep

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Roborodentia Robot: Tektronix, Sean Yap

Computer Engineering

Tektronix is a robot created to compete in the 2016 Roborodentia Competition. This report details the full function and implementation of the robot.