Venus Exploration Robots
Two autonomous robots that explore a simulated Venus surface, avoid craters and mountains, and bring rock samples back to the lab.
The challenge
Design two cooperating robots that search an unknown “Venus” terrain for rock samples and return them to a lab base, without driving into craters, off the boundary or into mountains.
System design
- Vision: OpenCV object detection to find samples.
- Sensing: infrared and ultrasound sensors to tell rocks from mountains, and light sensors to detect black craters and the boundary of the terrain.
- Communication: the two robots coordinate over ESP-NOW, a low-latency peer-to-peer wireless protocol.
- Software architecture, split into modules:
- Motion control for driving the wheels
- Sensor control to turn raw readings into obstacles and boundaries
- Communication between the two robots
- An autonomy state machine for high-level decisions
- Grip control for the claw that picks up samples
- Hardware: boundary and obstacle sensor testing, a custom claw, and base detection for the return trip.
My part
I presented the team’s design progress, which covered the route algorithm and communication protocol, boundary and obstacle detection, and the claw.