Current Lab Tasks
Listed here are a variety of general lab tasks, their associated project lead, and expectations. Choose a project you would be interested in and email our task manager for more details and to form any teams around certain tasks. This will be updated frequently, so please check back often. A list will also be posted in the lab for easy perusal. Good luck!
Unclaimed Tasks
Task
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Lead
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Expectation
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Vision - Characterize and calibrate Primesense, Kinect, and other cameras
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Sophie Li
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You will be responsible for helping to set up drivers for various cameras to be used on Edwin, our friendly human-interactive robot. Part of this will include learning all of the settings and how to program with various cameras. The deliverable for this will be a working set of cameras, documentation on those cameras, and simple calibration protocol for the cameras.
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Vision - Develop a gesture library
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Sophie Li
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Using a camera and existing Python libraries, develop simple demonstrations which track various gestures. The outcome for this project would be a series of gestures that a computer can recognize and then perform some simple task with (i.e. a wave of the hand makes the terminal print "hello")
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Sound - Research and characterize speakers and microphones
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Sophie Li
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You will be responsible for specing various speakers and microphones which will be used on Edwin, the interactive robot. Ultimately, this will lead to several purchases of tech which you will then need to characterize (learn how to use the drivers, develop simple calibration protocol, etc). The deliverable for this would be good documentation and a plug-and-play microphone and speaker system for Edwin.
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Sound - Experiment with different speech-to-text packages in order to decide on one to use on Edwin (Google Voice, Sphinx, etc)
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Sophie Li
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You will be expected to try out various speech-to-text packages and libraries in order to make an informed decision on which to use for Edwin. This will involve simple coding, research, and hours of lovingly talking to your computer. Ultimately, we expect some documentation and recommendation from you in order to implement it on Edwin. You will be the resident expert in the package that you select.
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Sound - Experiment with different text-to-speech packages in order to decide on one to use on Edwin (Espeak, Festival, Gespeaker, etc)
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Sophie Li
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You will be expected to try out various text-to-speech packages and libraries in order to make an informed decision on which to use for Edwin. This will involve simple coding, research, and hours of your computer lovingly talking to you. Ultimately, we expect some documentation and recommendation from you in order to implement it on Edwin. You will be the resident expert in the package that you select
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Simulation - Developing a robot arm and environment in Gazebo
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Sophie Li
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Our robot Edwin is actually a cleverly disguised robotic arm, which we need to learn more about. This task is about digitizing the arm in Gazebo - a virtual environment that plays with ROS. You will get to learn about this program, XML, and ROS through this project.
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Simulation - Developing poses of interaction for a robotic arm
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Sophie Li
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You will likely want to team up with the Gazebo team in order to develop "poses" that the arm can be in that may simulate an interaction. You will deliver a series of interaction pose sequences (such as, head tilts, body rocks, simple alive motions) that can be used in response to various sensor data being received by Edwin.
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Simulation - Developing models of the Gator in Gazebo
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Justin Poh
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The Gator is a large and unwieldy robot that we would love the ability to test virtually before bringing into the real world. We would love for you to build a virtual model of the Gator using Gazebo, ROS, and XML so that this can become a (virtual) reality.
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Other - Robot Costuming
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Sophie Li
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A huge part of interactive robots is the aesthetic appearance. We need help designing Edwin's one true form - particularly Edwin's mouth and covering. These may be actuated, static, etc - its is up to you. The expectation is that you will learn some trade secrets from Drew and Dave to making a convincing looking robot (did you know they used to work at Disney doing clever robot cover-ups?) cover to make interactions with Edwin real for humans.
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Sensing - Research GPS Options
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Justin Poh
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You will be tasked with looking into the various options for GPS that rival NavCom in accuracy but doesn't require subscriptions. This will be largely a research task with the opportunity of purchasing and experimenting with the GPS systems you discover.
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Sensing - GPS Coordinate Capture
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Victoria Preston
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Good coordinate maps of the soccer fields, rugby field, great lawn, and the meadow in Parcel B need to be developed in order to safely develop geo-fencing in our autonomous flights of SnotBot. You will be tasked with developing these maps which will mean playing with GPS hardware, writing scripts or manually collecting data from the GPS, processing that data into a useful form.
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Testing - Tissues for Whales
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Victoria Preston
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The SnotBot group has received a delivery of special knit cloth from Draper Knitting which is used for biological sample mopping (i.e. it is a fancy tissue for whales). We need someone or group of someones to develop a testing protocol for this cloth so that we know how to best keep it sanitary for missions, extract sample from it for analysis, and how to properly treat the cloth following a mission. You will get to do some hardware work, play with our whale analogue SnotShot, and then do some Bio work to prove your methods.
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Design for Manufacture - Fish Tags
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Victoria Preston
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Drew has a fish tags project that has been in development for a few years now, and would love a team to wrap up the product design and manufacturing information to get these out into the ocean. Interested in practicing product design, learning about manufacturing, and playing with radio frequencies? Get in touch with Victoria or Drew.
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Scientific Research - Learning about Volcanoes
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Victoria Preston
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We want to fly a drone into a volcano. How do we do that? What sensors will we need? What are the conditions that we'll need to be prepared for? How can we track the drone during the mission? If you are interested in helping us answer these questions and become a resident expert on volcanoes and things that fly into them, this is a great task for you.
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Sensing - Hardware and Firmware Research and Implementation for Sick LIDARs
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Justin Poh
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If you are interested in learning more about FPGAs, Data Rates, CRios, and all the other nuances of robot computing power, this is a great research project for you. Also expect to be tasked with imlpementing your research through purchasing the appropriate hardware for the sensors and developing code to make the system work nicely together.
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Claimed Contact task manager for requests to join
Task
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Lead + Team
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Expectation
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Simulation - Developing models of quadcopters in Gazebo
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Victoria Preston +
Kevin Guo |
The SnotBot team would like to move towards testing flights and code in simulation rather than the real world. In order to do this, we would like models of our vehicles to be found or built in Gazebo. Expect to learn Robot Operating System (ROS), Gazebo Simulation Software, and XML.
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Simulation - Building a Virtual Olin
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William Warner +
Isaac Vandor Charlie Weiss Katia Soltan Kaitlyn Keil |
In order to test virtual robots accurately, we would like to have a virtual Olin environment built in Gazebo to test with. You will likely team up with the GPS Geofencing teams and the vehicle simulation team in order to complete this task. You will learn how to use Gazebo, Robot Operating System, and XML with this project.
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Other - Unified Blinky Light Protocol
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William Warner +
Coleman Ellis |
Any good robot should have a system of communicating with human players - and in the lab we use light towers and flashing lights to do that. In the past, every team developed their own protocol. We're looking for you to unify a communications protocol so that anyone can look at a robot and know what it is thinking. You will get to play with electrical systems, lights, and software in addition to develop documentation that you will publish to all project managers.
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Actuation - Mechanical Shifting
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Justin Poh +
Isaac Vandor Arpan Rau Charlie Weiss |
The Gator needs a mechanical method of operating the gear shifter so that it can go in reverse. You can expect to be CADing, prototyping, and implementing a physical solution for this task.
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Sensing - Develop a sensor suite to detect obstacles
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Justin Poh +
Diego Garcia Garzon |
The Gator needs a sensor suite to attach to the rear of the vehicle which can detect nearby obstacles. Expect to explore and characterize sensors like IR, Sonar, Lidar, etc in order to implement a physical sensor system on the vehicle. Will also require some software development in order to test the sensors.
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Sensing - Characterizing Sharp IRs
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Amanda Sutherland + Sean Foley
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Learn how to collect data from Sharp IR sensors and analyze it for meaningful patterns or to inform behaviors. Expect to learn some simple wiring and coding to do this.
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Testing - Determining whether "DemonHex" is salvagable
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Victoria Preston +
Arpan Rau Kevin Zhang |
Our beloved DemonHex could be a potentially useful vehicle for the lab, but it has yet to fly well for us. This task will require you to learn to fly vehicles, implement pre-developed code, and develop a testing protocol that will ultimately decide the fate of DemonHex.
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Construction - Assembling a fixed wing aircraft
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Victoria Preston +
Sung Park |
Plane number 19 is out of commission and needs scrapped for parts, whereas Star-Wings needs some serious robot love. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to test all the parts from 19 before scrapping it, then robotizing Star-Wings. This will allow you to play with sensors, motors, and you will learn about road-kills for electrical systems.
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