Waypoint Navigation Rover

May 2021

Overview

With a team of 5 other Olin students, I helped built a fully autonomous rover that was capable of driving around campus. The Rover was capable of driving from point to point while preforming obstacle avoidance. The Rover also had a manipulator on the front that was capable of picking up and dropping items.

The rover navigated using a series of sensors. On the rover were two sonar sensors, five infrared distance sensors, a GPS module, and webcam capable of object recognition. The rover was powered entirely off of a Raspberry Pi and was built using the chassis and motors of a 4WD R-C car.

The Rover was programmed entirely using MATLAB.

Photos and Technical Documentation

Here are several photos of the rover’s construction and some of the technical documentation.

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Rover Construction

Here is our preliminary CAD model of the rover.

Here is our prototype model made out of laser cut cardboard.

After making a prototype, we decided to make the rover out of Delrin, a sturdy yet easily machinable material. To cut all the parts, we decided to CNC router it.

Here are some photos of our front manipulator/claw.

Here is our final rover during a test run.

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Electrical Design

Here is an electrical diagram of our rover and power calculations.

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Software Design

Check out all our code is on the following GitHub respository

Here is a finite state machine diagram that represents our rover’s software process.