This is a quick update of the robotics projects at Paraparumu College.
Navy Drone Update Beach Cleaning Robot Update Junior Robotics Update
Navy Rescue Drone Update
The naval drone has made steady progress this month with a highlight being the two drone pilots Niraj and Luke attending a CAA101 certification course at Paraparaumu airport run by Ryan Groves. Some of what the training covered was:
* The CAA laws including rules 101 and the new 102
* Airmanship
* Human factor relating to pilot in command of RPA's
* Navigational charts and airspace
* Flight radio basics
* Weather and environmental risks
* Hazard management including pre-flight risk assessments, RPS failsafes
* Safe launch and landing operations
Because the beach at Paraparaumu, where the drone will operate, is within 4Km of the airport the drone pilots must be certified to CAA 101 in-order to be able to fly the drone within 4Km of the airport. We are very grateful to Ryan Groves from RPA Skills Ltd for training Luke and Niraj and for his on-going support of the project. For more information visit
www.rpaskills.com The next step for the two drone pilots is to complete the practical section of the drone training so they can get their certificates.
Craig has been working on the landing gear, machining the landing gear wheel axeles from aluminium. The landing gear is important as it will absorb the shock of landing and also help keep the drone stable on the ground. The next job for the landing gear is to find some suitable tyres.
The drones engine, propeller, batteries, charger and engine speed controller finally arrived which has enabled Niraj to do the wiring for the batteries and start to get the PixHawk flight controller going, which was kindly donated by Ryan Groves.
Ethan and Tom have been working on mounting the new engine, engine controller and batteries on the fuselage. This is a challenge as they all need to be close together not least because when running at full power the engine can draw 60amps of power from the batteries. A few weeks before Travis and Hayden increased the height of the main fuselage struts to accommodate the 19 inch propeller required for the Turnigy - G160 Brushless Outrunner 290kv Motor used to propel the drone.
Maha and Ashleigh continued their work on the ripstop nylon wing surface. When Ryan Groves came along during one of the sessions he pointed out the fact that the rip-stop nylon was not completely wind proof, big problem. So we have decided to go back to using strong plastic sheet for the wings instead of the nylon. The picture on the left shows Ryan Groves and the two trainee drone pilots Luke and Niraj. In the background is the drone with the ripstop nylon wing surface that Maha and Ashleigh produced, no small feat.
Part of the pattern making process for the drones new plastic sheet wing surface is shown in the picture on the right. The idea is to have a set of about 3 or 4 wing surfaces to allow quick repair and some experimentation.
Elliot, Jack and Lachlan are working on the robot vision and also the navigation software that will setup the waypoints for the drone when it's on it's search and rescue mission.
Lachlan has also been working on his new channel server program which allows all of the different computers in the drone and in the beach robot to exchange information and commands seamlessly. Given that the beach cleaning robot has 6 different computers all with software by different students it's vital that there is a common way for all of them to share information in a consistent and predictable manner and this is where Lachlans Channel server program comes in. Lachlan has also created a "Recipie for gpu-accelerated YOLO object detection with Ubuntu, Nvidia, Darknet, Darkflow, Tensorflow-gpu, Opencv" which you can read here.
The remainder of this term will see many students returning to the group now that the winter sports are coming to a close. Which is good as there is still a great deal of work to do including mounting the main wing struts on the drone and getting ready for ground taxi testing.
The naval rescue drone project is sponsored by the Royal New Zealand Navy. For more information about the project click here
Beach Cleaning Robot Update
The individual systems of the beach cleaning robot have been making steady progress with the main robot chassis, which was a mobility scooter donated by Peter Venner Motors, almost ready for navigation testing which should start in the next week or two. In the mean time Lachlan has been using the Tinman robot to test his GPS navigation system as shown on the right.
The robot arm and it's gripper have also been coming along well with Calin and Thomas working on it so that now it can turn and pick up items as shown in the video below. The picture on the left shows an earlier version of the gripper mounted on the end of the robotic arm.
Thomas is working on the arms electronics shown on the left.
The design team, Michael, Saskia and Laura have been hard at work and have come up with a plan that calls for the internals of the robot to be mounted on a base board around which all of the external body work will be constructed. So now they are looking at materials that will be suitable for the robots outer body. To make the body work easier and to make the robot look better to the public they decided to mount the rubbish collector bin on the front of the robot so Craig and Saskia formed a length of steel tube into the holder which is going to support the bin. The frontal location also makes it easier for the robot arm to deposit items of rubbish into the bin. The frontal position should also make emptying it easier.
On the robot vision front the cameras were used to take images of various types of rubbish which are then going to be fed into the robot vision training system so the AI can start to 'learn' what an item of rubbish looks like. Elliot explains more in the video below.
Elliott is working on the robot vision for both the beach cleaning robot and the naval drone. Lots of students have been taking pictures of items of rubbish which are then fed into a program written by Elliott that allows bounding boxes to be drawn around objects in the images. Some examples of the training rubbish item images are shown below.
The robot vision training process is very very computationally intensive and the computer they are using right now goes not have a GPU. We are currently looking for a sponsor who would be willing to either donate a suitable computer to the group or allow them time on a suitable system. As robot vision is definitely going to be a big part of future robotics projects a well specked work station for robot vision training would be a welcome tool.
The beach cleaning robot is sponsored by the Kāpiti Coast District Council. For more information about the project click here
Juniors Update
The juniors have continued to work on Lydia the Pug dog for the Colleges stage drama production, Murder and Matchmaking, which will be in September. Lydia is one of the characters in the play and must be able to move about on stage and interact with the other characters in the play as required. One of the seniors, Sam, has fitted the drive motors and wheels while Isabella and Elizabeth are working on getting the dogs mouth to open and close. Jack is working on the tail which needs to be able to show emotion. Thanks to Coastlands Mall the kids will be taking Lydia the Robot pug dog to Coastlands Mall to promote the production at the Mall a few days before the first show in Sep.Lydia needs to be ready in the coming weeks so the plays cast can start to include it in the rehearsals.
The juniors competition for this term will be to make robot cockroaches with feelers out the front which will have to navigate a maze.