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Sam Penrod reportingBYU engineering students are showing off their senior projects that offer a look into the future. The students developed both driving and flying robots. The machines use computer vision to decide, without any human control, about where to travel.
A small car that looks like it is remote-controlled is actually making decisions about where to drive and turn by itself, relying only on the information it was programmed with.
"The car is supposed to drive itself. It looks for the different colored pylons. It turns right around green pylons and turns left with orange pylons. We give it the angles it is supposed to drive around, and it is supposed to look for the correct pylons and turn at the angles it is given," explained Bryan Heslop, computer engineering student.
Five teams of students in both computer engineering and electrical engineering have been working on this robot project this year, and today they are competing for the robotic car which best handles itself.
Other engineering students have created quad rotors. Similar to a helicopter, these robots are designed to actually navigate to a location using a camera and computer.
"When a human, say, maneuvers through a hallway, we're using our eyes, or vision system, to see where to go; and we've tried to do the same kind of thing, to embed that intelligence inside a flying robot to guide it through hallways and follow things on the ground," explained Randy Beard, electrical engineering professor.
The idea of creating something that can go into a situation and make decisions on its own has real possibilities for military or law enforcement. But for now, the students see their work as a real accomplishment.
"The quad rotor project itself is something a lot of different universities around the country are working on, a lot of graduate students; and as undergraduates we took off a really, really big project and made a lot of leeway. We have an autonomous vehicle that responds to targets and responds like it should, which is quite an accomplishment," said Brad Barger, electrical engineering student.
The project will pick up next year where it left off this year, as the students try to push these robots to take another step into the future.
E-mail: spenrod@ksl.com
