Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) is a skill-oriented degree. Therefore, the B.Tech students of robotics are usually not well-prepared concerning two aspects: (1) The theoretical knowledge is weaker than the students of bachelor of science (B.S). Robotics is one of the most comprehensive majors since it needs to address many extremely complicated problems involving mechanical engineering (ME), electrical engineering (EE), computer science (CS), and information technology (IT). So, the lack of theoretical knowledge constrains the students’ solving complicated problems. (2) The students have rare opportunities to expose themselves to cutting-edge technologies because up-to-date technologies tightly connect to comprehensive theoretical knowledge. However, the students must adapt to the changes in society by mastering and employing up-to-date techniques.

To overcome the above two difficulties to benefit the students’ future careers in the information society, a serial of challengeable projects that integrate the current robotics techniques are designed as the undergraduate projects of advanced robotics of B.Tech. Among them, a vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) robot spider is developed and implemented. In this project, some basic and advanced robotics techniques involving robotics vision, PID control, dynamics, kinematics, additive manufacturing, and artificial intelligence are used while being combined with the skills from other courses. The whole structure of the spider is fabricated through additive manufacturing by 3D printers. The skeleton of the spider is composed of three main parts: six legs, torso, and head. Each leg has three joints which are driven by servo motors. The torso is used to mount the sensors, control modules, communication modules, and power source. The ‘NVIDIA Jetson Nano’ is used to control the motors, manage the communication interfaces, and process the sensing data. The ‘Intel RealSense depth camera’ and ‘Intel RealSense tracking camera’ are used to futile the task of SLAM. The depth camera is used to acquire depth data to generate 3D point clouds. The tracking camera is an auxiliary reference to help to steer and to locate the position of the spider. Besides, an iPad tablet is used to provide a manual control option and render the scene in real-time. This project can be expanded as necessary in the future and developed into other practical projects as diverse as rescue robots, Mar rover, collaborative robot, and so on. Through this project, the students could learn knowledge through hands-on practice, furtherly explore their applications, enjoyed their achievement brought by the cutting-edge techniques, and prepare for the competitions in the future job market.


Vision-Based SLAM Robot Spider: An Undergraduate Project of Advanced Robotics of Bachelor of Technology

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

IMECE2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.