ARMR: Autonomous Reconfigurable Mobile Robot
The current generation of small "military-grade" unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) often poses problems for research and development work due to its high price point and closed software and hardware architectures. Each UGV quickly becomes a major investment for a research group and discourages heavy use under field conditions, while software incompatibilities hinder necessary modifications. The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) approached the 2011-2012 Olin SCOPE Program with these problems in mind and asked the team to produce a small autonomous UGV for use as a research platform.
The goals of the project focus on the development and prototype production of a low-cost indoor/outdoor UGV that provides a modular interface for the rapid expansion of software and sensor capabilities, as well as demonstrating autonomous capabilities.The team spent the fall 2011 semester developing basic software systems and investigating various modes of locomotion along with electronics suites. The spring 2012 semester is focused on bringing these three pieces together in a modified commercial robot chassis capable of completing the mission requirements.
Faculty Advisor
Andrew Bennett
Team Members
Matthew Alvarado
Francesco Balestra
Christopher Fitzhugh
Steven Higgins
Thomas Lamar
Michael Murphy
