University Rover Challenge
Date
August 2022 - June 2023
Location
Morgantown, WV
Role: Manipulation Sub-Team Coordinator
The manipulation sub-team was responsible for designing and constructing devices which allowed the rover to interact with its environment. As a sub-team coordinator, I was responsible for delegating tasks throughout the sub-team as well as taking on much of the work load. I acted as a line of communication to other sub-teams and assisted with system integration to ensure proper performance.
WVU University Rover Challenge Team Crowned World Champions of URC 2023
The University Rover Challenge is a world-wide robotics competition held annually in Hanksville, Utah by the Mars Society. The competition usually consists of four main parts: equipment servicing, extreme delivery, autonomy, and science. During the competition, I acted as the drivetrain operator for the rover. This required hours of training and in-the-field problem solving to skillfully traverse the rugged terrain at the Mars Desert Research Station.
Manipulation Sub-Team
As part of the manipulation sub-team, I designed the arm used on the rover using COTS composite hockey sticks and custom waterjet aluminum components. Hockey sticks were used because they were cheaper than usual sources of pre-made composite tubing and have a track record of being incredibly durable. The arm had to be capable of lifting 5 kg at full extension and was assigned a mass budget of 15 kg. The finished manipulator including the end effector and differential weighed around 7 kg. While no failure testing was conducted on the arm, it was capable of lifting 8 kg at full extension. I assisted in writing code to control the arm using inverse kinematics.
Autonomy Drone
The competition allows the use of either a drone or the rover for the autonomy mission. Either platform needed to be capable of traversing from the starting location to a series of GPS coordinates and search for an ArUco marker. After finding the ArUco marker, the vehicle must travel up to and stop within a few meters of the marker. I fabricated a drone capable of flying for 15 minutes with an onboard computer and webcam for identifying the ArUco markers. The drone was ultimately not used as the programming required to use it was not developed in time for the competition.