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July 22-23, 2011, University of British Columbia, British Columbia
UTRA flew 7 members across the country to British Columbia to compete in RobotRacing 2011 hosted by UBC. For this competition, UTRA designed and built the robot from the chassis and drive system to the PCBs circuitry.
Drag Race Competition (3rd Place) The drag race competition pits 2 robots against one another on a 30m long straightaway to see which one is the fastest (while staying within the track). UTonomous proved that raw speed alone is not enough to succeed in this competition, control is needed too.
Circuit Race Competition In the circuit race competition, robots must navigate through a course outlined by pylons while stopping at stop signs or traffic lights, going up/down ramps and avoiding other robots. UTonomous was one of the few robots that were able to successfully navigate the course.
Thanks to everyone who helped out with UTonomous and we'll be looking to improve it for next year. Special Thanks to the Jun family for providing us with delicious Korean food during our stay in Vancouver and the Festejo family for picking us up from Vancouver airport and providing UTRA with some transit passes. |
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(From left to right) Marc Ovsec, Raymond Lam, Wilson Tan, Billy Jun, Paul Giampuzzi, Zongyi Yang, Gabriel Ongpauco
May 6-8, 2011, Valcartier Garrison, Quebec University of Toronto placed 2nd in the 2011 UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) competition hosted by Unmanned Systems Canada. This was the first time this competition was run and UTRA was proud to be a part of it. Nine members drove 9 hours straight from Toronto to Quebec and arrived at the Canadian Forces Military Base at ~3:00-4:00 am. Unfortunately it rained through most of the 1st and 2nd day causing the competition to be moved indoors. This was the first time UTRA has designed an autonomous robot of such a large scale and numerous problems were expected. A few temporary patches (like changing the outdoor logic to indoor logic) were made during the competition. Overall, the competition provided valuable experience for the team and gave us a good idea on how to move forward and improve our robot. UTRA looks forward to bringing home the gold for the next competition.
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On Saturday, July 24th, 2010, UTRA's Autonomous Rover Team (ART) attended the Robot Racing competition at the University of Windsor. The team arrived in the city of Windsor a day earlier on Friday, July 23rd at 5:00 AM (five team members boarded the 1 AM Greyhound; talk about dedication!). Click on the picture to read more about what happened.
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The Autonomous Rover Team (ART) designs and builds the components for several robots. Components are designed to be modular and chassis-independent. Therefore we will build a chassis specific to a competition, install or pre-built components to make it autonomous, then tweak the code to competition-specific details. Sounds simple, right? Now we just need you to make those ‘pre-built’ components :)
MechanicalTo date, UTRA has been modifying off-the-shelf vehicles like electric wheelchairs and RC trucks. We need mechanical students with intermediate knowledge to help us make the required modifications (like computer mounts, sensor mounts, etc.). We would love to build a chassis from scratch, but we’re waiting some highly motivated mechanical students to take the lead! ElectricalART is a great place to learn how to build some simple circuits and gain some hands-on experience in wiring, soldering, etc. We need circuits that range from PCBs for our microelectronics, to high voltage (48V-DC), high current (100A) circuits. Learn and build protection circuitry, motor controllers, filters, and much more! SoftwareFor high-level artificial intelligence (AI), ART uses off-the-shelf software packages to keep code modular and integration easy. We program in C++ and C#, but are not opposed to Java and Python. Learn how to use and make sense of sensor data to accomplish a task. Test your algorithms in simulation, before putting them on the real robot. We do our low-level (motor control, analog sensor interface) control on Atmel AVR microcontrollers. We program exclusively in C – we are opposed to assembly. Learn the basics of how to move a motor, read a sensor, communicate with a computer, and much more! SensorsA robot is only as good as its sensors. ART buys a few high-end sensors and shares them across robot platforms. A large portion of our budget goes to these sensors, so we need people that know them inside and out. What they’re capable of, how to communicate with them, how to protect them, and which new sensors are required! |
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