Comp150-07: Intelligent Robotics
Project 2
Proposal due: Friday April 3, by 11:59pm, by email
Checkpoint: Tuesday April 14, in class
Demo: Wednesday April 22, at 12 noon (open block) at CEEO
Final report due: Tuesday, May 5, by 11:59pm, by email
Project 2 is the most important part of the course at 31% of the final grade. You create your own challenge for this project, write a short proposal on which I will give you feedback, then design and implement an intelligent robot. You will spend 2 (optionally 3) labs on Tuesdays April 7, 14 (and optionally 21st) working on your project at the CEEO, where you can get feedback from Denise and me. Collaboration between teams is ok and encouraged. In addition, project work is your homework for the rest of the course.
Here are the specifications for your robot:
- It has to perform a task or behave in a fairly complex environment in a way that can be described as intelligent.
- It has to have at least one motor that does something useful.
- It has to have at least one sensor that does something useful.
You will be demonstrating your robots not only to our class but also to the Mechanical Engineering ME184: Advanced Robotics class, whose project theme is sustainability. Therefore, optionally you can make your robot's task related to the sustainability theme. This is not a requirement.
"Something useful" is defined for the purposes of this project as "in furtherance of your robot's task". That means: you can't just use them for decoration or style, they must be there to serve a functional purpose.
Proposal
Hand in a one-page professional-looking proposal that explains:
- Problem or task: What will your robot do?
- Motivation: Why is it interesting to make such a robot? Why will its behavior be considered intelligent?
- Approach: How will you go about designing such a robot? What aspect(s) of the course will you draw on? What assumptions will you make?
- Timeline: How will you use the available 2.5 weeks? Include a series of tests and checkpoints.
Make sure your project is doable in the available time.
Proposal grade: 5% of course, graded on idea, clarity, presentation, and timeline.
Checkpoint: Tuesday April 14, in class
You will give a very short (10 minutes max.) informal presentation on your progress so far to the rest of the class. The presentation should take the form of showing your robot, explaining its purpose and functionality, its design, the problems and failure modes you have run into, and how you will prevent them by demo day. No powerpoint slides, although you are welcome to sketch on the whiteboard.
At this point, you should have most of basic functionality working and have a very solid idea of how to proceed.
Checkpoint grade: 6% of course, graded on teamwork, process, timeline following, and overall progress. No robot = checkpoint failed.
Demo day: Wednesday April 22, 12 noon
The exact format of the demo is to be determined.
Demo grade: 10% of the course, based on your robot's performance exclusively.
Final report, due Tuesday May 5, by 11:59pm, by email
This is the absolute last possible due date and there will be no extensions on it. In fact, you should aim to be done with your final report way before this, so you can focus on preparing and taking exams in your other courses.
The final report should take the form of an engineering conference paper and say the following:
- Introduction: background or context of your problem, problem statement, motivation -- why is this a significant or interesting problem?
- Hardware design and rationale
- Control architecture/software design and rationale
- Experimental results showing your robot's performance on tests (photos, graphs, tables)
- Discussion of early failures and redesign, significance of experimental rsults and what they demonstrate, assumptions of conditions under which your design will work, etc.
- Conclusion and future work: what is there left to be done on this problem?
Be concise but say everything you want to say. A good report length, including graphics and references but not code, is between 5 and 8 pages long. Do not hand in code.
If you use ideas, models, text, graphics, or code developed by others (other teams, published papers, textbooks, etc.), you should cite your sources, as academic integrity [1] demands.
Final report grade: 10% of the course, based on design, reported test results, clarity of writing, and presentation.
Good luck and have fun!
References:
[1] Tufts University Office of the Dean of Student Affairs. Academic Integrity. Online document: http://uss.tufts.edu/dosa/deansoffice/judicial/academicintegrity.asp
Paulina Varshavskaya, paulina at cs.tufts.edu