Hadi Soweidan
Research Mentor(s): Y Z
Mentor Department: NERS, EECS, MSE, ROB, AP
Authors: Y Z, Hadi Soweidan, David Ho, Celing Li, David Huang, Haesue Baik, Erin Xu, Kevin Na
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Presentation Type: Creative Project
Abstract
Machines have great potential to perform tasks within dangerous environments in place of people. In these extreme situations, the ability to navigate chaotic terrain with great speed is key to time-critical actions, such as searching for a person in a burning building or reaching a mechanism to shut down an escalating experimental malfunction. The adaptive design of human legs allows for navigating chaotic terrains. To emulate this, bipedal robots are in development in place of wheeled ones. However, wheels offer a key advantage in their greater speed compared to legged designs. The Helium team working on the Atombot project within the Z lab seeks to achieve speed and adaptability in designing and prototyping a wheel-legged robot for efficient navigation of extreme environments. While physical prototypes are in development, establishing a simulation platform for the robot allows for time efficient iteration and testing on the design. Furthermore, a major design goal for these robots is the ability to coordinate their efforts as a team locally, as extreme scenarios may impede network communication. Building many prototypes could become costly, lending merit to simulation as the primary means for testing and iterating the operation of team behavior. A simulation platform is in development using the Gazebo simulator, integrated with the Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) in use by the wheel-legged robot. An effective localized communication implementation is determined, to then have its performance experimentally verified through the simulation platform. Through the development of this wheel-legged robot, we are paving the way for a far more effective and human-first agent for emergency control.
