{"id":250791,"date":"2010-01-30T10:43:52","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T15:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.eng.wayne.edu:\/\/befc33471f0149844135a466296345d3"},"modified":"2010-01-30T10:43:52","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T15:43:52","slug":"unmanned-robotic-vehicle-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/250791","title":{"rendered":"Unmanned Robotic Vehicle 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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<\/div>\n
Students Shawn Hunt and Sam Li with their 2009 unmanned robotic vehicle.<\/em><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n by Derrick Bean
\n COE Public Affairs Writer<\/p>\n

Shawn Hunt, PhD Candidate (electrical and computer engineering), is hard at work on the sequel to last year’s Wayne State unmanned autonomous vehicle using lessons learned from last year.<\/p>\n

The WAVE (Warriors’ Autonomous Vehicle) is returning as the WAVE 2.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Hunt and his main partner, Sam Lee, built an unmanned robotic vehicle and entered it at the national 17th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) at Oakland University.<\/p>\n

Prior to last year’s event, Wayne State had not competed in 10 years. The 2009 team did not qualify for the final round due to electrical malfunctions. But the WAVE did qualify as one of only 13 schools for $500 in prize money when Hunt and Lee successfully communicated various messages that were then carried out by WAVE 2.<\/p>\n

“I felt good that we showed up and that we tried, but our goal is to qualify and do better than last year,” says Hunt, 32, who expects to complete his PhD degree this year. So this year will be his last shot.<\/p>\n

Good thing he is resourceful. The obstacle course requires each vehicle to stay between boundaries while responding to commands during a limited time period. Hunt plans to use a new algorithm that he has been working on for his dissertation. The code can track points in a video feed, and tell the robot where to go. <\/p>\n

Darin Ellis, associate professor (industrial and manufacturing engineering) is on board to advise the team again. The robot is being built in his lab. Abhilash Pandya, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering, is also lending his expertise.<\/p>\n

“We are using the same robot base — a modified wheelchair — we worked on for 2009, with only slight modifications,” says Hunt. “We plan to add two cameras that will look to each side of the vehicle to increase the overall field of view of the course. We are using a new circuit board that one of our team members built from scratch that will reduce the number of components that we need in our architecture.”<\/p>\n

Other changes include: a sturdier mast to mount and stabilize the main overhead camera; replacing the rear wheel with a large plastic ball to increase maneuverability; and waterproofing the shell.<\/p>\n

The Engineering Alumni Association has pledged $1,000 from its Engineering Alumni Grants for Education and Research (EAGER) Fund for the project. The money will pay for new equipment as well as this year’s $250 registration fee due at the end of February, Hunt says.<\/p>\n

“I think I learned a lot last year,” he says. “I have trouble delegating responsibilities, and I think by breaking out into subgroups our first year, I wasn’t doing a good job leading. This year, I’ve tried to come up with the overall architecture of the system so that everyone can see how all of the pieces fit together, and I can better assign subtasks.”<\/p>\n

This year, Hunt has assigned various tasks to his team members, who include Prem Sivakumar, Shankar Manickam, Wilfred Wheeler, Samir Al-Stouhi, Michael Jessie, Wilfred Wheeler and Vishal Lowalekar.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students Shawn Hunt and Sam Li with their 2009 unmanned robotic vehicle.   by Derrick Bean COE Public Affairs Writer Shawn Hunt, PhD Candidate (electrical and computer engineering), is hard at work on the sequel to last year’s Wayne State unmanned autonomous vehicle using lessons learned from last year. The WAVE (Warriors’ Autonomous Vehicle) is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}