Outdoor mobile robot
- CategoryInternship
- Project dateSummer 2022
- Skills requiredDesign, CAD, path-planning and SLAM in ROS2
About this project
During the summer of 2022, I worked at the University of Melbourne’s robotics lab on their mobile robot system as a part of MISTI-Australia (MIT’s international study/work abroad program). We built a outdoor mobile robot with a robotic arm attached for construction applications. The purpose of our research was to investigate how robots, and more specifically mobile robots which can go around the site, might help in construction applications.
At the start of my internship, I helped finish up the build of the mobile robot itself and made it safe for the public. I then helped program the robot’s path-planning and arm motion, making sure that the robot could navigate the space and perform tasks using its attached arm. At the end of my visit, we demoed the robot at the university’s Open Day! (At some point, I wanted to encourage people to ask me about the robot since we were inside a caged-off area for safety reasons, so I decided to tape on a smiley face to the robot arm.)
This was by far the largest project I’d ever worked on. It forced me to think about the nitty gritty bits of engineering — adding emergency stops, reducing noise, adding safety features when people are detected. In this way, I learned that my designs never really operate in a vacuum, and that the harsh reality of building a project from start to finish is a whole lot of Googling and troubleshooting.
It was a big jump for me to go from plug-and-play electronics to wiring and programming robotic systems from scratch. I learned a ton about applying packages and transforming existing code to suit your needs, since this was my first time working with ROS2. I also have never really worked much in simulation before, so it was really cool to see my robot’s digital twin on the computer to verify the real robot’s behavior. This simulation element was super important since the robot itself isn’t something you’d want behaving unexpectedly; after all, the entire robot weighs well over 300 kilograms!
Participating in a MISTI exchange was an incredible opportunity to both learn technical skills and experience a culture away from home. It was an awesome experience working at the Melbourne School of Design, and I can’t wait to take the skills I’ve learned to my next class or job.