Informal meetings where leaders reflect and discuss are not a recent development. However, a more formal structure developed back in 2015. In the past 5 years, this has commonly involved our leaders going to a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains a short drive away from Atlanta. Given the pandemic, this year’s Leadership Retreat at the end of August was a bit different.

This year many of our leaders met on Discord, the popular video communication app. They took the opportunity to introduce themselves, finding out about the teams they work on and their hobbies. They then participated in what has become known as the “notecard discussion” where the leaders personally reflected on questions about the RoboJackets mission statement, their previous experiences in the organization, and mentorship. The objective of this activity is to expose our leaders to different experiences and viewpoints across RoboJackets. They also participated in a virtual RoboJackets Trivia scavenger hunt in randomly assigned teams using the RoboJackets Wiki, to explore teamwork and work breakdown, necessary for effective team function. That evening, they took the time to play some party games including games in the Jackbox Party Pack and the newly popular game Among Us to unwind and team build. The next day the leaders worked on an imaginary hackathon where they worked in small groups to come up with fun robot ideas and tools necessary to create them, building on the teamwork skills explored in the virtual scavenger hunt. Finally, they looked at some topics related to the coming year and discussed what they wanted to focus on as an organization and any changes leaders wanted to see occur within the organization.

We look forward to seeing what our leaders will accomplish this coming year!

After that, members from each project team participate in a tabling session with demos of current projects just outside the Howey lecture hall. These smaller demos and tabling sessions give more specific information to prospective members and help them get involved in ongoing projects, usually by signing up for the teams’ mailing lists. Once they’ve found a team, they simply start showing up to meetings and contributing, no application or prior experience required. Every team is expected to set aside projects explicitly for new members and provide opportunities for mentorship from older members. These can range from building 3lb combat robots in small teams in BattleBots, to developing a controller for robotic arms as a part of RoboNav.

This year, our approach had to be different to ensure the safety and health of our current and prospective members. What hasn’t changed is the content and the goal: introduce prospective members to our projects and kickstart their involvement with RoboJackets as best as possible. What has changed is the forum this happens in. This year, instead of meeting in our usual Howey lecture hall, we delivered our General Interest presentation via two YouTube Premieres on September 1st and 2nd. At the time of writing, those premieres had a combined total of about 650 viewers. You can watch the presentation here, or view it on the video player embedded on our recruiting webpage. After these premieres, instead of the typical team-specific tabling and demos, we instead held Q&A sessions via BlueJeans, GT’s video conferencing application. In addition to changing up our method of GI delivery, our approach to connecting with prospective members to get them to RSVP for our general interest meetings also changed. We relied significantly more heavily on virtual methods of interacting with new students and other prospective members, including stories in the Georgia Tech Weekly Digest, virtual organization fairs hosted by GT and the CoC, and other GT internal mailing lists.

We asked our President, Alex Field, about his thoughts on the new GI approach. Despite the significant challenges, we managed to deliver our message through the virtual General Interest Meeting: 

I think GI went about as well as we could expect a virtual GI to go. RSVPs were down from previous years, largely due to there being no FASET; however, we were able to get roughly 400 people to RSVP. The video we made for the presentation looked great and delivered all the information that was important. The YouTube Premiere system worked well and the chat was super supportive of RJ which helped emphasize our team culture.

One part of the virtual General Interest experience he thought could be improved was the BlueJeans Q&A sessions: “[they] weren’t nearly as active as in-person [tabling sessions] and a lot of people just filled out the form link to join. However, a few of the calls like RoboCup Software went for a really long time with good discussions.”

Overall, despite challenges imposed by the virtual format, General Interest seems to have been a success. We are excited to welcome another generation of RoboJackets members contributing to the promotion, education, and advancement in the field of robotics and learning practical skills along the way.

This year, however, Symposium was held virtually using WebEx on September 11th through 13th. Our participation gave us the opportunity to reach student teams in the FIRST Lego League Challenge, the FIRST Tech Challenge, and the FIRST Robotics Competition. RoboJackets members prepared and delivered two classes on the 13th. The first class was “RoboJackets: Robotics After High School,” presented by former presidents Jason Gibson and Joe Spall, and IT Chair Todd Hayes. The second class was “Introduction to AutoDesk Inventor” (the 3D computer-aided design package we use), presented by current Secretary and Volunteer Coordinator Malak Bayyari, President Alex Field, and Outreach Chair Michael Chen. Both classes were followed by Q&A sessions to enable students to interact more directly with the presenters. You can view recordings of these classes below!

Michael Chen, our Outreach Chair, had this to say about the event:

There was quite a lot of work which went into coordinating what to present, when to get trained on WebEx, and what to do during Symposium, but the event went wonderfully as RoboJackets’ first main Outreach event for the fall!

Varun Madabushi, well known for his contributions to electrical teams across RoboJackets, does research at the Dynamic Adaptive Robotic Technologies (DART) Lab. According to Varun, the lab works on “investigating mechanisms that allow more efficient robot locomotion along multiple terrains.” The robot he works on has swappable “propulsors,” IE mechanisms specifically suited for walking on any particular terrain. The robot swaps between “a 4-wheeled and 6-legged configuration [using] a robot arm which attaches and detaches the propulsors from the robot,” and stores the propulsors inside the robot while not in use. Varun’s responsibilities on the project are “testing and iterating on the leg, arm, and storage mechanisms… and controls for the arm and gait design for the 6-legged configuration.” You can see the robot Varun works on in action in the video below.

Oswin So, a software member who contributes to RoboNav and RoboCup’s software stacks, does his research at the Autonomous Control and Decision Systems Lab. The lab focuses on “stochastic optimal control,” a subset of control theory concerned with designing control paths that deal with randomness within systems. An optimal control path that minimizes risk is chosen using a cost function, which evaluates a given situation by looking at specific system parameters. Oswin’s current project is “control using different risk measures. While the majority of existing algorithms optimize for the mean of the disturbance [from the control path], ie. what the most likely outcome of the disturbance is, risk measures allow you to take into consideration different aspects of the uncertainty distribution.” He cites autonomous driving as an example for when these models can be utilized: “in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving where lives are at stake, it makes more sense to consider events that are less likely to occur but might be catastrophic and result in the loss of human life. This may lead to [implementing control] policies that are less effective in the average case but have much better outcomes in rare, unexpected scenarios.”

These are just two cases of our members getting involved in research around the institute. Look forward to future issues in which we will feature other research our members participate in!

Following the cancellation of Sparkfun AVC, the team searched for a new competition and discovered the Electric Vehicle Grand Prix (evGrand Prix). Originally started as a manually driven electric go-kart competition (which still serves as a major part of the event), a new autonomous division was started around 2018 (what a fortunate coincidence!). The team was happy to find a great successor to Sparkfun AVC!

The premise of Autonomous evGrand Prix is to take a Top-Kart frame (a frame manufacturer typically focused on gas-powered go-karts) and make it electric powered and autonomous. The competition, held in the infield of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, requires navigating other vehicles and barriers as fast as possible in a head-to-head race around the course. 

In order to race around the competition, we need a kart to make autonomous. Introducing RoboRacing’s latest pasta-named robot, Rigatoni! 

The competition requires teams to use some standard components. This puts the focus of the competition on autonomous decision making and navigation, supported by a modified mechanical and electrical platform. The base frame of Rigatoni is a Top Kart USA EAV Chassis. The chassis includes the original aluminum tubing, base plates, drive axle, steering system, and braking system. There are four 12V marine batteries connected for a 48V base system, which powers the provided motor controller, DC motor, and safety contactors. Everything else is up to the team to decide!

The team originally began work on Rigatoni back in the Fall of 2019. Though the team had the aforementioned standard components, none of the CAD was provided. The mechanical team has been working on modeling the base CAD of the frame and auxiliary components in Autodesk Inventor. This process has led the team to creating new custom components to interface with the existing system to enable autonomous control. For example, a steering assembly was designed that allows electric control using the on-board computer while also allowing manual steering for moving the car when it is not powered. After the assembly is designed, it needs to be manufactured. Preliminary mounting systems for the camera, GPS, and power electronics have already been installed and will be improved over the year as needed.

The RoboRacing electrical team has been making steady progress as well. There are 5 custom printed circuit boards (PCBs) that handle steering, driving/braking, Emergency Stop (1 for wireless, 1 for interfacing), and remote-control. These various boards need to be both powered and communicate back to the central control computers. wo of these problems have been combined into one solution with the use of one specific implementation of Power over Ethernet (PoE). This version of the PoE standard (Mode B 10/100) has Ethernet communication connectors with spare wires that are typically unused at lower communication speeds. These extra wires can carry 24V power to the custom PCBs while maintaining the reliable and fast communication of Ethernet to interface back with a main control computer. Standard Ethernet communication is becoming increasingly common in modern vehicles, so the application of this technology on Rigatoni directly mirrors industry trends. 

Software is what makes the difference between a standard electric vehicle and an autonomous electric vehicle. The software platform, which runs on the Robot Operating System (ROS), has three main components: localization, mapping, and planning and control. Localization involves determining the robot’s position on the track using on-board sensors. Rigatoni utilizes a LiDAR (shoots out lasers to determine the distance of objects), cameras, GPS, an inertial measurement unit (measures acceleration and rotation) and many other sensors to help sense the obstacles and the environment. This information is fed into mapping, which helps determine the location of obstacles and other robots. The final component is planning and control, which involves determining a path to get around obstacles and attempting to travel along the determined path. 

The original goal was to compete in evGrand Prix 2020, scheduled to occur in April of 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 competition was canceled and development on the robot had to come to a halt due to campus closure. As of right now, evGrand Prix 2021 is currently planned to occur in late Spring. The team has made a lot of progress so far, and they hope to continue to ride this momentum into the 2020-2021 season!