Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
27 Node-Based Range-Extending Recon Drone
 Dhruv Diddi
Michael Lally
Thomas Korenchan
 Hershel Rege design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
other0.pptx
photo0.jpg
proposal0.pdf
video0.mp4
Team Members:
Michael Lally - mlally2
Thomas Korenchan - kornchn2

The utility of drones in reconnaissance roles is an expanding field. Drones are currently used to assess the spread of both urban and forest fires. However, their utility is still largely limited to exterior action, either operating above the canopy of the forest or in the air around a burning building. Their ability to operate is limited by where their command signals can reach.

Our project addresses this with a node-based range-extending solution. This project expands on drone control methodologies and allows for operation in previously inoperable environments. This process will allow unmanned vehicles to explore at extended range, or around corners that would not be feasible with a traditional connection.

Our project would have 2 main components: the vehicle and the controller. The controller will be a PCB, outfitted with directional and task-specific buttons, communicating through an XBee radio with ZigBee communication protocols. Our vehicle will take the form of a 3-segment remote operated vehicle. Each segment will consist of a 3D printed body, a battery pack, a PCB control board driving the wheels and connected to an XBee radio.

The 3 segments are coupled together in series with a mechanical release between each segment, similar to that used to connect train cars, that can be detached at the operator’s command. While in range of the operator, the operator directly controls the lead segment. As the vehicle approaches its limit, the back segment will detach, and the operators signal will be routed through that segment's transceiver to the lead segment. By deploying a node at the outer reaches of the vehicle's range, the vehicle's range will be extended. This same process will be repeated by redeploying the middle segment when the vehicle reaches the outer range of the back segment's radio.

VoxBox Robo-Drummer

Craig Bost, Nicholas Dulin, Drake Proffitt

VoxBox Robo-Drummer

Featured Project

Our group proposes to create robot drummer which would respond to human voice "beatboxing" input, via conventional dynamic microphone, and translate the input into the corresponding drum hit performance. For example, if the human user issues a bass-kick voice sound, the robot will recognize it and strike the bass drum; and likewise for the hi-hat/snare and clap. Our design will minimally cover 3 different drum hit types (bass hit, snare hit, clap hit), and respond with minimal latency.

This would involve amplifying the analog signal (as dynamic mics drive fairly low gain signals), which would be sampled by a dsPIC33F DSP/MCU (or comparable chipset), and processed for trigger event recognition. This entails applying Short-Time Fourier Transform analysis to provide spectral content data to our event detection algorithm (i.e. recognizing the "control" signal from the human user). The MCU functionality of the dsPIC33F would be used for relaying the trigger commands to the actuator circuits controlling the robot.

The robot in question would be small; about the size of ventriloquist dummy. The "drum set" would be scaled accordingly (think pots and pans, like a child would play with). Actuators would likely be based on solenoids, as opposed to motors.

Beyond these minimal capabilities, we would add analog prefiltering of the input audio signal, and amplification of the drum hits, as bonus features if the development and implementation process goes better than expected.

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