Project Description
The initial task was to
create an intelligent autonomous vehicle that would be able to optimally
complete a desired task. The vehicle was to be something simple such as a
lawnmower or vacuum cleaner. In these cases the task would be to mow the
lawn or vacuum the floor in an intelligent manner. The decision was made to
design an intelligent vacuum. Instead of designing the whole vacuum from
scratch the team purchased a Roomba. The Roomba is a relatively inexpensive
robotic vacuum cleaner with very limited intelligence. By using the Roomba
as a physical platform it allowed the group to spend more time on the design
of the program and integration of the sensors then on the physical design of
a whole robot. Also, having the Roomba on hand allowed us to study the
autonomous algorithms of the Roomba and try to improve upon them.
Once we decided on creating a more intelligent vacuum
and using the Roomba as the platform, we wanted to create a more unique
design problem besides just making it more intelligent. From this notion
the Hazbot was born.
The Hazbot is an intelligent autonomous robot that
searches, detects and contains hazardous material. Instead of just having
a robot vacuum that cleans the whole room, with the Hazbot, all that needs
to be cleaned is the areas that contain the hazardous material. Not only
does the Hazbot have to clean material, but it has to be able to detect the
material as well. Because the material that the Hazbot will be cleaning is
hazardous, safety now becomes the biggest design issue that we are faced
with. Also the containment of the material allows us to have a unique
physical design problem. With the added uniqueness of the project the
group feels that it will be quite challenging and demanding of our skills as
mechanical engineers and as engineers in general.
