Click here to see the paper we published, "An Autonomous Firefighting Robot", at the FCRAR 2003. You can also see other submissions to the conference.
We placed 4th in the IEEE hardware competition. There were a lot of cool robots and it was fun. I think there were 27 robots in all, but only 25 competed in the trials. Click here to see how we ranked! Click here to see how our robot disguised as someone's lunch looked as he passed through the x-ray machine in Jamaica.
Hector's tone detector arrived and works perfect! I created the user interface, it works cool and looks rather industrial, and I designed a new line tracker, which will replace our current Lynxmotion line tracker. It can cope with intersections and varying light conditions. Surface mount LEDs even! I'm a maniac.
I've finished the new logic board. I overlooked a possible short when mounting the board on standoffs (VCC trace too close to mounting hole - see picture), but this was remedied with a plastic spacer. I had the boards sent to ExpressPCB (no way I could make these in my bathroom). It's not bad though, $62 gets you 3 boards and includes 2nd Day Air. Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes...
My team decided that my logic board was too big, so I'm redoing it with smaller components. To program the smaller microcontroller (PLCC footprint), I had to create a special programming adapter. Of course, that's a one time programming just to get the bootloader installed.
I now have a working ultrasound routine, and the displays are ready. I've mapped out the house in coordinates to aid in the navigational programming. I moved the older pictures to this page:
 Hector is testing the tone detector circuitry for the robot. |
 Kevin is working on the prototype for the arm. |
 Amir, Isaac, and Hector (under the wood) build a mock of the house. |
 I'm showing off Prototype 2. |
William Dubel 03.09.2003
