Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
32 AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE WITH VR CONTROL
 Chenliang Li
Honglu He
Siping Meng
 Amr Martini appendix0.pdf
design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
photo0.jpg
presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
Introduction & Problem
Robots have changed our life for a long time and definitely we will produce more of them to help our daily life to become better. Smart house is already able to support remote control to turn air condition on or off through host’s mobile phone. But what if we want to feed the dog when we are at work in the office or light the candle on the table to create a romantic environment before we get home? There are some numerous detailed situations that are hard to accomplish by simply using programmed command and smart appliances nowadays in the market. What if we design a brand new interaction method, for instance using a robot to meet our requirements remotely which can break the limitation of normal smart appliances? Then we should find a more interactive way to create a command for our robot.

Solution Overview
Therefore, we come up with an idea that people could produce the command in VR manually and then an autonomous robot will reproduce this action and finish this task remotely. Our group together with the other group will build a wheeled robot with VR control to perform simple tasks assigned by the user with the VR helmet.
Since it is a really large project, after sending Prof. Arne a simple proposal and get his permission, we split the project into two parts, the upper part and the bottom part.(upper part group:https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=27877)
Our group will be mostly focusing on the bottom part of the robot, including wheel speed control, localization, robot arm (to move an object around), microcontroller, path planning and power.

Solution Components
The speed control of the robot will be a PD control. The robot will determine its current location based on its wheel encoder and gyroscope. But to be more accurate, the location will be filtered with Kalman Filter with the predetermined location from vision provided by the other group. We’ll implement two 2-link planar robot arms at the front with servos, and passing end-effector information to let the servo rotate by inverse kinematics. The microcontroller will also be located at the bottom, retrieving object, obstacle and map data from the other group, and sending them to the VR helmet. With continuously updating map by the LiDAR from another group, we will implement A* algorithm to determine the shortest path with obstacle avoidance to the user targeted location.

Sensor Subsystem
The sensors we’ll use are the wheel encoder and gyroscope to perform localization based on dead reckoning. The other group will use LiDAR and camera to detect obstacles and objects.
Processing Subsystem
The robot will always start at home location as world origin, and keep attaining sensor values to keep track of location. The processor will receive location info based on the camera of the other group, and the location will be updated. Map will also be continuously updating, and once the map is updated, the microcontroller will re-A* to calculate a new path to final location. The robot arm will receive end-effector location data and calculate corresponding joint angles.

Power Subsystem
We will use a 12v rechargeable battery with USB at the bottom, to provide power for microcontroller and motors and other sensors.

Criterion for Success
Our bottom part of the robot will be able to calculate the position of the whole robot and control two robot arms to grab, hold and place objects. It will also be able to process the information that comes from the upper part and then calculates the optimal path to finish the command from VR device.

Covert Communication Device

Ahmad Abuisneineh, Srivardhan Sajja, Braeden Smith

Covert Communication Device

Featured Project

**Partners (seeking one additional partner)**: Braeden Smith (braeden2), Srivardhan Sajja (sajja3)

**Problem**: We imagine this product would have a primary use in military/law enforcement application -- especially in dangerous, high risk missions. During a house raid or other sensitive mission, maintaining a quiet profile and also having good situational awareness is essential. That mean's that normal two way radios can't work. And alternatives, like in-ear radios act as outside->in communication only and also reduce the ability to hear your surroundings.

**Solution**: We would provide a series of small pocketable devices with long battery that would use LoRa radios to provide a range of 1-5 miles. They would be rechargeable and have a single recessed soft-touch button that would allow someone to find it inside of pockets and tap it easily. The taps would be sent in real-time to all other devices, where they would be translated into silent but noticeable vibrations. (Every device can obviously TX/RX).

Essentially a team could use a set of predetermined signals or even morse code, to quickly and without loss of situational awareness communicate movements/instructions to others who are not within line-of-sight.

The following we would not consider part of the basic requirements for success, but additional goals if we are ahead of schedule:

We could also imagine a base-station which would allow someone using a computer to type simple text that would be sent out as morse code or other predetermined patterns. Additionally this base station would be able to record and monitor the traffic over the LoRa channels (including sender).

**Solutions Components**:

- **Charging and power systems**: the device would have a single USB-C/Microusb port that would connect to charging circuitry for the small Lithium-ion battery (150-500mAh). This USB port would also connect to the MCU. The subsystem would also be responsible to dropping the lion (3.7-4.2V to a stable 3.3V logic level). and providing power to the vibration motor.

- **RF Communications**: we would rely on externally produced RF transceivers that we would integrate into our PCB -- DLP-RFS1280, https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16871, https://www.adafruit.com/product/3073, .

-**Vibration**: We would have to research and source durable quiet, vibration motors that might even be adjustable in intensity

- **MCU**: We are likely to use the STM32 series of MCU's. We need it to communicate with the transceiver (probably SPI) and also control the vibration motor (by driving some transistor). The packets that we send would need to be encrypted (probably with AES). We would also need it to communicate to a host computer for programming via the same port.

- **Structural**: For this prototype, we'd imagine that a simple 3d printed case would be appropriate. We'd have to design something small and relatively ergonomic. We would have a single recessed location for the soft-touch button, that'd be easy to find by feel.

**Basic criterion for success:** We have at least two wireless devices that can reliably and quickly transfer button-presses to vibrations on the other device. It should operate at at *least* 1km LOS. It should be programmable + chargeable via USB. It should also be relatively compact in size and quiet to use.

**Additional Success Criterion:** we would have a separate, 3rd device that can stay permanently connected to a computer. It would provide some software that would be able to send and receive from the LoRa radio, especially ASCII -> morse code.