Robots

Mason Engineering students and faculty compete at 99 Luftballoons competition

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:02:30 +0000

Mason Engineering students and faculty compete at 99 Luftballoons competition Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/08/2021 - 12:02

Left to right: Dinesh Karri, Robert Hooks, and Joseph Matthew Prince getting ready to compete at the Luftballoons competition at Indiana University.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) robotic shark blimp, which is what a team of George Mason University students and faculty used to participate in the 99++ Luftballoons Competition at Indiana University on November 9 through 13.

The competition took place at the Indiana University Bloomington campus where people from Mason, the University of California Los Angeles, Indiana University at Bloomington, Pennsylvania State University, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Surface Warfare Center – Crane Division, and the Army Research Laboratory competed in an aerial soccer match using remote-controlled LTA robots.

“LTA robots don’t need any support to hold them in the air. Helicopters need propellers, but all LTA robots can stay in the air on their own. Instead, they need controls to move them about in the air,” says Mason graduate student and competition teammate Joseph Prince Mathew.

Each team had defenders and seekers to protect their goal and score points against the other team. “It got pretty competitive,” says Dinesh Karri, another team member. “But it was so much fun.”

Every team played each other, and the teams with the most points faced off at the end of the five-day event. “Unfortunately, we lost, but we had the most points overall throughout the week,” says Mathew.

Mathew and Karri were working with Assistant Professor Feitian Zhang to develop an underwater glider as part of their PhD studies when they found out about the opportunity to bring their skills to the air. “It was a change of medium, from underwater to air. The dynamics are pretty similar,” says Mathew.

Robert Hooks, a junior undergraduate electrical engineering major, jumped on the project because of his interest in robotics and autonomous systems. “When I heard about it from one of my professors, I was very intrigued. It was a valuable and fun experience to learn hands-on,” says Hooks.

Topics

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

swarm robotics

Robots

aeronautics

In This Story

Cameron Nowzari

Senior design helps DoD protect personnel

Martha Bushong — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 12:42:21 +0000

Senior design helps DoD protect personnel Martha Bushong Mon, 11/11/2019 - 07:42

Our military members trek into dangerous territory on a daily basis, and sometimes their equipment can bring back unwanted remnants of the war zones they leave behind that can pose additional potential threats. But two George Mason University mechanical engineering senior design teams are finding a way to make the process of removing the threats by decontaminating the equipment safer and more time and cost efficient for our soldiers.

When military vehicles leave safe zones, they must be decontaminated of any chemical toxins that were picked up before they can return. This process often entails a lot of manual labor and high levels of exposure to chemical agents for those tasked with finding and neutralizing them. To make the process safer the teams are building autonomous vehicle sprayers that will spray the entire military vehicle, and its undercarriage, with a detection spray that the military already uses.

“The main issue is that these people are using a handheld sprayer to spray down the entire car,” says Vineet Nair, one of the team’s leaders. “That just takes a lot of time, so they want us to automate the process.”

Effectively, their autonomous robot or sprayer frame will spray the vehicle with the chemical detection spray in about 10 minutes, and the detection spray will show the decontaminators where the chemical agents are located so that they can localize their efforts.

“Our design will make it safer because they [soldiers] don’t have to be so close to the chemical warfare agents for longer periods of time,” says Matias Gipler, one of the team members.

The teams are still in the planning phase of their year-long project that is sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an agency within the Department of Defense. They had a few setbacks at the start of their project when their statement of work got changed one month into their design process.

“We had to go back to the drawing board and completely redesign,” says Ivory Sarceno, one of the team members. “But that’s what happens in the real world of engineering.”

They are nailing down their final design in November, and the team members are excited to start building their project. Even with their setback, they feel they’ve caught up and are on the right track. They cited time management as their main challenge since they are juggling the project along with other courses, jobs, and clubs.

However, they feel prepared with engineering principals they have already learned at Mason to take on their project. “This project is very hands on, and it lets you know what goes on in a real job with the engineering and business sides of the project,” says Angelica Watson, team member.

Professor researches swarm-robotics field

Nanci Hellmich — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:47:16 +0000

Professor researches swarm-robotics field Nanci Hellmich Wed, 10/16/2019 - 11:47

“Robots are cool, but what is even more awesome is the math behind the robots. Robots are very good at following instructions, but the caveat is they only understand math.”

— Cameron Nowzari, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Cameron Nowzari served as the faculty advisor for several senior design teams doing swarm-robotics projects.

When Mason Engineering professor Cameron Nowzari was an undergraduate, all he wanted to do was design and build robots.

He was especially interested in the idea of swarm robotics, in which large teams of robots are designed to cooperatively complete tasks that a single device might not be able to do alone.

“At first, I was mostly interested in physically building the robots and getting them to work,” says Nowzari, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “But after countless frustrating nights spent alone tinkering with robots that didn’t work nine times out of 10, I discovered the beauty of mathematical control theory.”

Nowzari has been the faculty advisor for several senior design teams doing swarm-robotics projects, in which students learn that building a group of robots to perform specific tasks requires setting up and solving the correct math problems, he says.

“Robots are cool, but what is even more awesome is the math behind the robots. Robots are very good at following instructions, but the caveat is they only understand math.”

Nowzari’s research is focused on the design of efficient, distributed coordination strategies for complex network systems. “My work has applications in mobile sensors, autonomous robots, allocation of distributed resources, public health and epidemiology, network protection/security, marketing, and the internet of things.”

And as part of his research, Nowzari is working on deploying a swarm of 100-plus robotic blimps that can cooperatively complete tasks that would be difficult or impossible for a single agent. He recently received a grant from the U.S. Navy for his project, “Enabling Emergent Behaviors in Unmanned Robotic Swarm Systems.”

“Coordinating large numbers of autonomous agents to act as a cohesive swarm is challenging because each autonomous agent has a different view of the world,” he says. “There is no centralized computer or brain telling each agent what to do. Each individual robot must figure out for themselves exactly how they can contribute to the goal of the overall swarm.”

His research group develops and solves general classes of math problems that can be applied to many real-world issues.

“The robots are a sexy application that bring control theory to life,” he says. “The main challenge is figuring out precisely what math problems need to be solved to get the robots to act in the intended way.”

This story appeared in the fall issue of ECE News.

“Coordinating large numbers of autonomous agents to act as a cohesive swarm is challenging because each autonomous agent has a different view of the world."

— Cameron Nowzari, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Mechanical engineering team designs Thunder Rat robot to inspect campus storm drains

Nanci Hellmich — Wed, 23 May 2018 14:09:49 +0000

Mechanical engineering team designs Thunder Rat robot to inspect campus storm drains Nanci Hellmich Wed, 05/23/2018 - 10:09

A team of four mechanical engineering seniors designed a robot called Thunder Rat to inspect storm drains on campus. The bot gathers information to help Facilities Management employees pinpoint where they need to make a repair or clean out debris.

He’s a robot doing what a human can’t do.

Kristin Lewis, BS Mechanical Engineering ’18

If a storm drain clogs on campus, it’s Thunder Rat to the rescue.

The custom-made robot goes where no man dares. Armed with a camera, lights and a water-resistant chassis, the bot explores deep dark drains underground looking for leaves, debris, and garbage that block water flow.

“He’s a robot doing what a human can’t do,” says Kristin Lewis, BS Mechanical Engineering ’18.

Lewis and three other seniors in the Mechanical Engineering Department designed the robot for their senior capstone project so that Facilities Management employees could use it to inspect the university’s storm drain system.

The reason: It’s often difficult to pinpoint precisely where drains are clogged, which can lead to costly excavations and disrupt campus activity, Lewis says.

Thunder Rat gives “us a set of eyes that can go underground for an inside view of the quality and condition of the pipes,” says Samira Lloyd, sustainability program manager in the Office of Sustainability, which funded the project through the Patriot Green Fund. “It can save us time and trouble and help our system run better.”

The team, which also calls itself Thunder Rat, faced several challenges in their efforts to design a non-destructive storm drainage inspection system. They had to make sure the robot was water resistant so they filled in lots of cracks and gaps in the chassis.

The students had to find a way to operate the bot because they couldn’t use WiFi underground, so they tethered it to a laptop with a sturdy Ethernet cable, which they also used to pull it out of drains.

Operating the laptop with a game controller, the user can control the onboard computer on Thunder Rat to manipulate the robot’s lights, wheels, and video camera, says Alex Walters, a mechanical engineering senior who graduates this winter.

As Thunder Rat travels through the drain, the robot videos the inspection. If the user detects an issue, he has the robot snap photos. A mechanical wire counter tracks how far the bot travels inside the pipe.

Facilities Management's land development group has already used Thunder Rat to inspect a few pipes on campus, and the videos and photos played an important role in the decision-making process, says the group's manager Zhongyan Xu. "The students were energetic, ambitious, and self-driven. We were impressed not only by their technical skills but also their project management skills."

There are products like Thunder Rat on the market, but they are bigger, more expensive and sometimes it takes a team of people to run them, Lewis says.

“People are selling equipment similar to ours for $10,000 to $40,000,” Walters says. “We spent close to $3,000, so ours is significantly cheaper.”

When the team members turned the robot over to Facilities Management, they provided training as well as a user manual.

“It was great to apply some of the academic concepts that I learned over my four years at Mason and leave some small legacy behind,” Lewis says.

Other team members: Antonio Evans, BS Mechanical Engineering ‘18, Matthew San Nicolas, BS Mechanical Engineering ‘18

Around the Corner or In the Home: Improving Robot Navigation and Localization

dallen21 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:18:55 +0000

Around the Corner or In the Home: Improving Robot Navigation and Localization dallen21 Mon, 02/02/2015 - 11:18

Imagine being dropped off in a new city without a map or your GPS. Think about how you would move around and not get lost. Most people would try to recognize landmarks and keep track of their turns and motions, so they can eventually reach their destination or can retrace their steps. Now, imagine doing this with your eyes closed. That's what it feels like to be a robot without "eyesight."

The problem of navigation and localization is one of the main challenges robots or autonomous cars must solve very accurately, and Dr. Jana Košecká's research seeks to open the "eyes" of robots allowing them to perceive the visual world. A person who is blind can learn and adapt because of the human brain, but it is even harder for a robot that is limited by its computer programming. The challenge for computer scientists is to build a sufficiently robust robot "brain" that can interpret what its cameras and sensors detect.

"A really good example of computer vision at work is a robotic office or home assistant doing various fetch-and-delivery tasks such as navigating a room and trying to find keys, a phone, or a stapler," says Košecká. "In addition to knowing its way around, the robot assistant must be able to detect and recognize objects in large amount of clutter. Computer vision makes all this happen."

The use of visual information, however, goes beyond the navigation, recognition, or scene understanding tasks, which are the main problems that Košecká's group is focusing on. Developing computer programs for interpreting the visual world that surrounds us can benefit the visually impaired, enhance manufacturing and service robotics both in households and healthcare environments, expand robot use in search and rescue missions, or enable drones to deliver packages.

"In recent years our field made some great strides. Some pieces of the puzzle are coming together," says Košecká, "yet large portions remain unsolved. While we are still far away from having systems that can describe in words something as complex as Monet's paintings, the number of specialized applications that rely on interpreting visual information in restricted domains is growing faster then ever."

The natural environment is notoriously unpredictable and changing, so agents (robots) that can navigate around buildings or through landscapes in place of humans have valuable practical applications. Košecká says she finds the problems in her field contagiously interesting. She says, "I enjoy teaching students about Computer Vision, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and sharing a laboratory with many cool robots."

Learn more about Dr. Košecká's teaching and research.