Student ProjectsNU Robotics - Lacrosse Robot
Project Manager
Jackson Bremen, Student
Amount Requested
$5,000
Summary
The Northwestern University Robotics Club (NURC) is an undergraduate student group dedicated to creating a community of students interested in robotics and dedicated to creating and learning together. Across our seven subteams, we work on a range of projects, bringing together students across the university. We as club leadership intend to provide developing engineers with all the tools, resources, and guidance necessary to create robots that excite students about complex systems that do things that are fun to watch. NURC has been developing a Lacrosse Goalie Robot over the past 7 years designed, tested, and fabricated entirely by undergraduate students. Over the past year, the team has made massive strides towards its completion and have finished the mechanical and electrical design and implementation. The project is at the forefront of completion requiring additional work with the motor control system and the computer vision system. As of now, the team has implemented open loop motor control meaning that the robot is controllable by a team member with a remote controller. After the team finished work on the open loop control system, we took the robot out to the beach and let the students and community members have a go attempting to beat one of our members in control of the bot. The team would love to continue to showcase our work to the Northwestern community, and we think that this grant would help to further our progress in the creation of an autonomous lacrosse goalie robot. We need to upgrade our motor controller to implement closed loop control such that the robot can use positional data taken from our mounted camera system and move accordingly. This substantial investment will help bring this project to completion and contribute to furthering our members' robotic and professional skill sets.
Planned Activities/Investments
NURC works consistently towards the completion of the LAX goalie bot throughout the academic year, meeting twice weekly. One issue that plagued previous years development of the robot was the fact that there was no competition tied to this project. To continue to make progress at the same rate as this past year, the team will be implementing due dates tied to public showcases of the robot. This will give actionable dates to make improvements to our control systems. Over this next year, the team plans to start by implementing a mirroring program that takes the position of the ball from the camera system and moving the robotic arm to a corresponding position. This milestone will demonstrate closed loop motor control and will require additional motor control testing with integration into the current computer vision system. This goal is fully achievable in the fall quarter of this year and will be marked with a demonstration. Members will be given individual tasks with corresponding timelines to fit into this schedule as given by team leadership. This structure simulates real-job timelines while also allowing for older members to provide support and training to younger members. The last two quarters will be dedicated to implementing full 3D ball tracking with trajectory mapping. We plan on unveiling our completed autonomous robot for demonstration during McCormick’s Engineering Week at the end of next year.
Impact
Firstly, the lacrosse goalie robot project will impact our own members, showing them that they can complete complex projects by breaking them down into smaller manageable tasks. The team leadership will continue to mentor and develop our members' engineering and professional skill sets. Next, this project will impact the Northwestern women's lacrosse team. Our leadership has been in contact with the women’s lacrosse team staff, and they are interested in having this robot as a tool for their players. Finally, the lacrosse goalie robot would impact the community. As mentioned above, the team is interested in having this bot out performing saves in the public eye as much as possible contributing to public excitement about NURC and robotic systems in general.
Sustainability
NURC’s work on lacrosse/robotic training is already ongoing, and were a big draw of people to the club last year. Videos and pictures of the robot can be used to attract sponsors, and the funding from the Murphy society allows NURC to continue improving the quality of our robots, which can then be used as promotional tools to attract further members and sponsors to the club. Any materials that we purchase for the robot this year, such as plastics, aluminum, and steel, will be purchased in bulk and will last for years to come. Additionally, one of our biggest bottlenecks has been processing power for our ML/CV systems, so we will use this grant to purchase a computer that will serve us for years to come. We will sustain the project financially with other funding sources in the future, as we already pursue corporate funding to support our seven subteams. To accomplish this, NURC explores a range of funding opportunities and sources for our subteams, ranging from corporate sponsorship to crowdfunding through Northwestern’s CATalyzer system, and university funding.
Deliverables
The major deliverables for the LAX project are closed-loop control implementation, 3D ball tracking, and motor control and computer vision integration. Closed-loop control will be demonstrated in the mirroring demonstration at the end of the fall quarter. 3D ball tracking and final integration will be demonstrated at E-week at the end of the year.
Previous Projects
Last year, NURC was awarded funding to pursue the advancement of an underwater remotely operated vehicle, or UROV, and we are incredibly grateful for the generous support of the Murphy Society. For the first time ever, the UROV subteam was able to pursue the engineering of a secondary robot to complement the first. Additionally, the team looks to begin testing of the final version of the UROV robot, and advance to the MATE ROV world championship. The generous support of the Murphy Society enabled us to add more functionality to the robot, including a robotic manipulator with more degrees of freedom, computer vision software, powerful thrusters, and a sleek hydrodynamic design. All of these tasks were accomplished within the context of environmental sustainability and climate justice. Again, we are enormously grateful to have the support of the Murphy Society, and hope to achieve a similar level of success, purpose, and growth with our Lacrosse team. ted at E-week at the end of the year.
Budget Overview
- $1,000 Motor Controller: Device to power and control our motor systems. Upgrade needed to implement closed loop control.
- $4,000 Computer: Upgrade needed to run our computer vision algorithms in real-time. Computer vision algorithms are very resource intensive.
Total: $5,000
Advisor Sign-off
NU Robotics - Nick Marchuk, Mechanical Engineering