Participating in RoboJackets involves a great deal of hands-on engineering knowledge and an intense desire to learn. Because RoboJackets accepts members regardless of prior experience in robotics, we created a training program to help our members quickly learn what they need to know to contribute to the teams. Even experienced members can find value in the training because of the breadth and depth of topics covered. This training is created and run by our own members, leveraging the experience they’ve gained in RoboJackets to iterate on the training they also participated in.

To keep our members safe and healthy, all our training content is being delivered using virtual lectures that are recorded so they can be viewed later on the RoboJackets Training YouTube channel. These virtual lectures are supplemented by video guides and practice exercises. Additionally, the training material is filled with practical examples from RoboJackets projects to help students understand the contexts in which they’ll be able to use their newfound skills.

The training program has a wide breadth of topics, divided up into disciplines, which roughly correlate to each subteam in RoboJackets. The disciplines are mechanical, electrical, software, and, the newest discipline, firmware.

Mechanical training covers a wide range of topics, including basics of robot design and material selection, the basics of AutoDesk Inventor (3D CAD), and an understanding of designing parts for manufacture using the manufacturing processes available in RoboJackets’ shop spaces. Sam Walters, the mech training lead, gave a brief statement on how he thinks training is coming along this year:

[Training is] going well so far! The team I worked with over the summer prepared us very well, so it’s easy for all of the trainers to quickly review our material and then convey it each week to all of the new members. We’ve added some video guides to supplement the sessions and help make up for the online format, and I feel like they’ve been a very helpful asset thus far. From time to time I’ll send a survey to the members to try and gauge how well things are going, and try to adjust accordingly.

Electrical training is focused on the design and prototyping of printed circuit boards (PCBs). It covers the basics of electrical circuits, prototyping with breadboards, and circuit design concepts including component selection, and AutoDesk EAGLE, the software we use to design our PCBs. Asha Bhandarker had this to say about how the program is progressing this year: 

It is going well given that we decided to make training completely virtual. A big part of electrical training is interactive labs where we have new members work with hardware. So this semester we found a simulation environment (TinkerCAD) to be able to simulate breadboarding and Arduino code. Along with the resources we post on GitHub we have been uploading our lectures on YouTube so in the future people can follow training later in the year.

Software training is focused on the software we use to make our robots autonomous. This year, the software training program underwent some major changes, as described by Kyle Stachowicz, the software training lead: “This year, we overhauled our software curriculum to teach not only the practical aspects of robot software – using C++ and ROS [Robot Operating System] – but also an overview of a broad array of fundamental topics in robotics. Students in software training learn how to work with sensors, write their own algorithms for computer vision and motion planning, and experiment with machine learning.” This enables students that may already have experience with practical programming to stay engaged by learning the newer topics in robotics. In previous years, software training used custom robots designed by RoboJackets so new members could see how their programming decisions affect robot behavior. This year, the team opted for using simulated robots in a virtual environment to provide practical experience with debugging. Kyle points out the success of this change: “Despite [not being able to use our standard robots], we’re going strong with more than 40 members continuing through the program.”

The final discipline, firmware training, is new this year. We talked with Arvind Srinivasan to explain the motivation behind the new discipline: “firmware training was not a new idea. As our robots got more complex (and have more firmware), we realized we can’t wait for the 2+ years it usually took to get people comfortable with doing both the EAGLE PCB design side (which was in training) and the firmware code side (which never was).” Previously, we didn’t have the time or people resources to add a new training discipline, but this year the stars aligned in a lack of other bigger projects in training, such as the design and manufacture of software training robots, and the larger need for firmware developers for RoboWrestling. In terms of structure, firmware training shares 3 weeks’ worth of content with electrical training: basics of electronics, introduction to prototyping and Arduino, and design choices. The other content includes low level program topics, including state machines, bitwise operations and registers, and communication protocols for transmitting data between components. The newest training discipline has hit the ground running, as Arvind highlights: “We readily adapted our training from in-person to online through the use of TinkerCAD to basically build full simulations of what the trainees would have used [in real life]. With the occasional issue as we try this new paradigm, we have made pretty good content that should be good to go for next year (with minor polish of course) and can easily adapt back to in-person training.”

This training has a major impact in helping our members learn the basics of their chosen discipline to fast-track contributing to their team. It also gives our experienced members the opportunity to develop soft skills in teaching and mentoring that will continue to pay dividends in their educational and professional lives. 

Check out our training pages or our RoboJackets Training YouTube channel to see more details on our content.

RoboJackets places robotics as the focus of our endeavors, but sometimes it pays to slow down and give our members a chance to get to know each other better in a non-engineering context. Many alumni will remember general meetings, in which the entire team comes together either to hear a presentation given by a professor about an engineering topic or an inter-team hangout session, featuring multiplayer games like Rocket League, karaoke, or board games.

More recently, these meetings have evolved and individual teams have had their own social events, including the aforementioned activities. Due to COVID restrictions, these events have all shifted online. The most recent socials have been hosted by BattleBots, RoboWrestling, and RoboCup. For the people who show up, they find a good time playing games like those in Jackbox party packs, Among Us, and plenty of laughs. It’s also a good way to get to know new and old members, as Afshan Chandani from BattleBots highlights: “It was a fun way to meet the new members who joined this year and hang out with all of the returning members who I hadn’t seen in a while.”

Please note: The photograph used for this article was taken in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another newsletter brings us another opportunity to feature RoboJackets members who take part in robotics or robotics-adjacent research at the Institute. Just as we did last month, we’ll be taking this opportunity to feature two of our members involved in research.

Malak Bayyari, the current Secretary, is part of a Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) with the Laboratory for Intelligent Decision and Autonomous Robots (LIDAR). She explains, “The LIDAR team is split into several different subteams that work on a variety of projects to improve our two main robots, Cassie and Athena.” The robot she works on is Athena, “a bio-inspired, highly agile upper body humanoid robot.” The problem her team is working on is addressing an issue where Athena has a large number of wired connections that disrupt long periods of movement. They are choosing to address this by “creating a network of smaller PCBs in the arm.” Malak’s core responsibilities are in the software side, specifically on “researching and working on preparing the necessary code that will allow Athena to move almost completely wirelessly,” while the rest of her team works on the design of the PCBs. She also highlights her learning during her experience: “Throughout the semester this has involved familiarizing myself with the STM32 hardware and software, and PID controls systems.” You can learn more about Malak’s VIP here.

Hussain Gynai, former Software Training lead and current RoboCup Software lead, does research with the Complex Rheology and Biomechanics (CRAB) lab. His research focus is on “self-locomoting objects (like robots) [that] move on membranes that can deform.” His current focus is to “use results from previous research done on the system to create a wheeled robot that is able localize and move to or away from object[s] on the membrane.” In order to simulate an object on a membrane, a gantry system is used “to create a mobile ‘depression’ on the surface that moves in some trajectory across the membrane.”  The robots he works with use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to detect where the depression is. Based on this input, the robots then use a control system to move away from or toward the depression. This is only the beginning of this work: “The end goal is to have an n-robot case where we can have many robots interacting on the membrane without colliding.” He also helps with the development of a software simulation for the gantry-robot system to enable faster iteration.

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) was started in 1993 as a spin off of the International Aerial Robotics Competition. The goal of the competition was to create a robot that could navigate an outdoor obstacle course autonomously. The competition itself was meant to be a challenging, multi-disciplinary design project for undergraduate and graduate students. RoboJackets started attending the competition in 2003 with the robot Buzzbot, which makes it the longest-attended competition in RoboJackets’ history. Today we look back at what the RoboNav (previously IGVC) team has accomplished in the past three years and what the future holds for the team.

2019 was a very successful year for the RoboNav team. Jessii was awarded first place in the design competition, which put the team tied for third place overall. Jessii was the fourth robot to pass qualification (a requirement some robots never meet) and travelled over 150 feet (albeit in the wrong direction) on the official AutoNav course, a massive improvement over our previous performances. While RoboJackets has had varying degrees of success in the past, Jessii was the best performing robot for the team in all its time in IGVC. To understand how we got to this point, we first have to look back at the lowest point for IGVC in recent history: Jaymi.

Starting in 2015, the team began designing the robot Jaymi for the 24th IGVC to be held in 2016. However, due to its complex design, shown above, it could not be completed for the competition and was instead planned to compete in 2017. During the production of Jaymi in 2016 and 2017, it became evident that the design was not just too complex but also inherently flawed. Jaymi featured two drive wheels at its midline and two caster balls at the front and back. The caster balls were 10-inch-diameter, steel balls, held in place with loose brackets and roller ball bearings. When driving, the weight of Jaymi was not enough to prevent the balls from coming out from underneath the frame, despite weighing over 200 pounds. The drive wheels featured custom gear boxes with a decoupling mechanism and suspension system. The gear boxes were originally not designed with the proper dimensions, and a lack of experienced machinists on the team made the fabrication process long and problematic. Since the frame was steel and was welded before the rest of the robot could be properly designed, making adjustments or additions to the robot was difficult or impossible. There were numerous, smaller choices that severely hindered the progress and performance of the robot. For example, the GPS was placed underneath the central, aluminum mast of the robot, which caused signal interference when the robot tried to localize itself.

Jaymi was never finished. Instead, less than 24 hours before leaving for the competition, a few brave members put together a makeshift robot, lovingly named Woodi, using scrap wood in the shop and supplies from Home Depot. Because of the delays in Jaymi’s production, the software team’s first and only time to test the software on a robot was at competition. It did not go well, to say the least. However, the team used this low point to create a new plan and approach that led to the team’s success today.

Jessi, Woodi’s successor, was designed differently from the beginning. After reflecting on the previous year, the team refocused their efforts on making a robot that was simple from top to bottom. The primary requirement was that the robot could be built in less than a year to allow the electrical and software teams ample time to test and iterate on their designs. In turn, Jessi was intended to be a minimum viable product: meet the minimum size requirements, keep the controls to a simple differential drive with one caster wheel, use aluminum extrusion for the frame to simplify manufacturing, keep the design as modular as possible to allow independent systems to be modified without affecting the others, use off-the-shelf gearboxes and motors, and ensure everything could be waterproofed (for the inevitable Michigan rain). By sticking to these basic principles, the team was able to design and manufacture a remarkably elegant robot in a fraction of the time it took to (almost) make Jaymi. Jessi had significantly fewer failure points than Jaymi and certainly demonstrated the importance of keeping designs simple. As with any complex project, there were challenges along the way, but fueled by the failure of the previous year, the team powered through them. And the effort paid off. At the 26th IGVC (2017), Jessi ended up in second place in the design competition, coming behind first by only 11 points (out of 480). 

This was, of course, only the beginning. Jessi’s simple and modular design meant that iterating would be easy. Since Jessi was stable mechanically and electrically, it gave the software team plenty of opportunities to test new software changes without waiting on the mechanical or electrical team. With Jessii, the mechanical team’s goal was to improve the accessibility and serviceability of the robot. Electrical’s goal was to make the electrical system more robust and to begin designing more diagnostics capabilities to identify problems more easily. Software’s goal was to improve the performance of the mapping and planning algorithms. In particular, the team was able to significantly improve the vision of Jessii by using a U-Net Convolutional Neural Network and planning with the Field D-Star (D*) Path Planning algorithm. Once again, there were challenges along the way (including a burned out power supply), but the team soldiered on and produced the most successful IGVC bot for RoboJackets to date, winning first place in the design competition and third overall.

This past year’s efforts (2019-2020) has been focused on a final revision of Jessi: Jessiii. While there was final retouching needed on the mechanical side of things, the principal focus has been on improving the electronics, including the firmware, and continuing to improve the software. This year saw significant progress on the diagnostics system and other systems improvements, such as hot-swapping capabilities for the electrical system. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the RoboJackets’ shop was closed and the 28th IGVC was cancelled. While Jessiii still has yet to compete, the RoboNav team is working on bigger and better projects to come.

After the team’s success with Jessi and Jessii at IGVC, the team intends to enter a more competitive environment. RoboJackets aims to promote, educate, and advance in the field of robotics, and, to keep in line with the mission, RoboNav is accepting a bigger challenge for a greater learning experience. Jessi’s design has been retired and the team is building on their experience with the next IGVC robot: Swervi, a four-wheeled, swerve drive robot that is able to move in any direction, a competitive edge in a navigation challenge. Though the design is more complex, the team has learned a great deal from their past experiences and plans to tackle this challenge with greater insight, better support from the organization, and a deeper understanding of the design principles that led to their previous success.

In April/May 2020, the IGVC team also elected to change its name to RoboNav. These changes reflect the team’s intentions to expand into another autonomous navigation challenge. Within the next two years, RoboNav plans on participating in the University Rover Challenge (URC), a competition aimed at creating the next generation of Mars rovers. For now, RoboJackets will continue to compete in IGVC and URC while we have the manpower and resources. It is clear that IGVC and Jessi have created the foundation for RoboNav’s future goals. Both will forever hold a special place in RoboJackets history.

You can read the design reports for Jessi (IGVC 2018) and Jessii (IGVC 2019) from the IGVC site for more details on their designs. You can also find the results for the competition on the IGVC site for each year.

With an organization as large as RoboJackets, it’s no surprise that we face many challenges associated with simply keeping the organization running smoothly. Thankfully, we have talented individuals across the organization who volunteer their time to handle anything and everything, from placing and receiving orders for the materials we use, to bringing you this newsletter!

One such group of dedicated individuals is our very own RoboJackets IT team. While the team is small, usually only consisting of around 6 people depending on the year, their impact is immense. Our IT team manages many behind-the-scenes aspects of our work, such as access management for the many services we utilize in our day to day operations, like GitHub and Dropbox, and maintaining our own internal network and servers. The flagship project of our IT team is MyRoboJackets, a custom built web app, which we use to track important information including dues collection, attendance, demographics, and our resumé book.

COVID-19 has certainly presented a whole new set of challenges for us to handle. Most importantly, how can we ensure the health and safety of our members while they work? Sometime around April, it became clear that we would need to be ready to answer this question come August. We would need to be able to track and manage the amount of members within our space in the SCC in order to adhere to occupancy safety guidelines and recommendations. The existing options to solve this problem require additional hardware and are costly to implement. With this challenge in mind, our IT team planned a hackathon to develop our very own solution, which would become the People Counter System. With the People Counter System, pictured above this article, we accurately manage the amount of people within our space. The system is contactless, BuzzCard-compatible, and required no additional funds to implement. The People Counter System is currently used not only by RoboJackets, but also was adopted by all of the other organizations within the SCC after our success to keep our members safe!