SEMI-AUTONOMOUS RESCUE TEAM Team Description Materials Q1 2020
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SEMI-AUTONOMOUS RESCUE TEAM Team Description Materials Q1 2020 Connor Kneebone, Alexander Cavalli, Jack Williams, Matthew Williams, Graham Stock, Charlotte Drury, Anthony Gambale, Michael Cavalli, Nathaniel Kneebone, Martin Hosking, Alexander Thorning This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Table of Contents Logistical Information 1 Introduction 1.1 Note on the current COVID-19 situation 2 Reflection on Sydney, 2019 3 System Description 3.1 Hardware 3.1.1 Robot 3.1.1.1 Chassis Design 3.1.1.2 Main Computational Board 3.1.1.3 Movement 3.1.1.4 Motor Controller 3.1.1.5 Sensors 3.1.1.6 Vision 3.1.1.7 Power 3.1.1.8 Wireless Connectivity 3.1.2 Control Panel 3.2 Software 3.2.1 SIGHTS 3.2.1.1 Problem Definition 3.2.1.2 Languages 3.2.1.3 Features 3.2.1.4 Modular Design and Extensibility 3.2.1.5 Open Source Presence 3.2.2 Robot (Host) 3.2.2.1 Operating System 3.2.2.2 Further Development Projects 3.2.2.2.1 Pynamixel Library 3.2.2.2.2 Autonomy 3.2.2.2.3 SLAM 3.2.3 Vision 3.3 Network Configuration 4 Operational Procedures 4.1 Setup 4.2 Mission Strategy 4.3 Pack Up 5 Experiments & Testing 5.1 Experimental Design 5.2 Wireless Connection Range 5.3 Battery Duration Testing 6 Future Developments 7 Conclusion 8 References 9 Appendices 9.1 Appendix A – History of SART 9.2 Appendix B - Components & Estimated Total Cost for Mark IV 9.2.1 Robot 9.2.2 Control Panel 9.3 Appendix C – Robot Render and Components 9.4 Appendix D – List of Software Packages 9.5 Appendix F – Web and Open Source Presence Semi-Autonomous Rescue Team Team Description Materials Q1 2020 Logistical Information Team Name Semi-Autonomous Rescue Team (S.A.R.T.) Organisation St. Francis Xavier College Country Australia Mentor Graham Stock Contact Person Graham Stock Phone: +61 417 439 452 Email: [email protected] Website https://www.sfxrescue.com Team Email [email protected] teleoperation software suite compatible with most robot hardware. The team is also in the process of developing a partnership with an industry leader in network communication technologies and look forward to seeing how this partnership will enhance the wireless communication abilities between our robot and control panel. 1.1 Note on the current COVID-19 Figure 1 - The S.A.R.T. (from left to right) Anthony Gambale, Alex situation Thorning, Martin Hosking, Nathaniel Kneebone Connor Kneebone, Due to the current COVID-19 situation, some of Aaron Maggs, Graham Stock, Michael Cavalli, and Alex Cavalli, our suppliers including Adafruit have temporarily with the Australian Federal Police Bomb Response Group, 2019. shut down or are due to shut down their operations until further notice. As a result of this, the team has 1 Introduction had difficulty sourcing several components for the The Semi-Autonomous Rescue Team (herein robot and control panel. known as the S.A.R.T.) is a group of STEM enthusiasts originally formed in early 2015 with the 2 Reflection on Sydney, 2019 intent of developing and creating a robot capable Moving towards the 2019 competition in Sydney, of competing in the 2016 Rapidly Manufactured Australia, the team worked with current industry Rescue Competition (RMRC) at RoboCup in solutions for rescue robots and disaster-response Leipzig, Germany. The current team is focusing on rovers to develop an all new robot which better modifying the new base design, introduced at the suits the RMRC competition testing methods, as Sydney RoboCup in 2019, to be more compact, well as being a much more marketable solution for functional and reliable. emergency services agencies. Inspired by these A major focus of development since last year’s commercial designs the team participated in competition has been the formal implementation RoboCup at Sydney, 2019 with a prototype of the of the SIGHTS software, a complete, open-source Mark IV. This robot was a major change from our previous design and represented the biggest jump moved to a separate housing mounted on the in technology since the project’s inception. robot’s arm (Figure 2). As mentioned previously the weight of the head unit was too great for the As the whole hardware platform was changed there capacity of our motors. To address this issue, were bound to be performance and quality issues, further balancing of components between the two especially with components that had not been sections is occurring. implemented in earlier designs. For example, during the manipulation test we discovered a major One of the main goals of the Mark IV was to flaw in our robot design, the head was too heavy improve its marketability with first responders by for the arm to lift. This also severely limited our increasing its practicality as a confined-space rover. visual capabilities; the main forward camera was With the inclusion of the robot’s arm, in mounted on the head which was at times difficult conjunction with the rear paddles, the robot has to control. To rectify this the non-essential significantly improved manoeuvrability over components in the head have been moved to the difficult terrain as well as new capabilities provided chassis and we have decided to move away from by its long reach such as opening doors. Much of Dynamixel components. The switch to DC motors the inspiration for this robot’s design came from increases complexity of the hardware needed but the Servosila “Engineer” Mobile Robot (Figure 3), still reduces costs and allows us to increase torque. which is designed to achieve all of the requirements The chassis frame is also being modified to be more of first responders although comes at a very high manoeuvrable in the tighter spaces of the course. price point. 3 System Description 3.1 Hardware 3.1.1 Robot 3.1.1.1 Chassis Design The Mark IV is vastly different from its predecessors. It was introduced in Sydney 2019, and has seen a number of changes and modifications to the chassis to fix issues we found during the competition. One of the most significant changes we made when introducing this design is the addition of a manipulator arm. Figure 3 - Example of the long reach capability the Mark IV was designed to achieve. Robot pictured is the Servosila "Engineer". Source: https://www.servosila.com/en/mobile-robots/index.shtml The head of the Mark IV is in prime position atop the arm to allow the operator to easily see over obstacles when the arm is extended. The expanded vision of this model, achieved through its camera array and LiDAR optimises the robot for confined spaces; no matter the size of the space and Figure 2 – The prototype S.A.R.T. Mark IV orientation of the robot, the operator can always get a picture of what is happening on all sides of Instead of having all the components in the body the robot. of our robot, as in our previous configurations, the control board and some of the electronics were Changes were made to the dimensions of the Dynamixel servos could produce, the robot would chassis since the prototype to allow for extra struggle in difficult terrain such as sand. manoeuvrability in confined spaces. 3.1.1.4 Motor Controller Further applications of the Mark IV’s extendibility The switch from Dynamixel servos to DC-motors include reaching people in confined or difficult to has necessitated the use of dedicated circuitry to reach locations; the gas sensor and microphone, control them. As fine control of multiple motors both contained within the face of the head, can be on one board was necessary, we decided to develop brought directly to the person. The positioning of our own board based on the TI-DRV89XX family the main control electronics on the arm also allows of drivers, as commercial solutions were either too for these electronics to be moved away from expensive or not feasible. This is currently in environmental factors such as interference or development, but progress has stalled due to water. difficulty sourcing parts as mentioned in Section 1.1. 3.1.1.2 Main Computational Board The Mark IV robot uses a Nvidia Jetson Nano 3.1.1.5 Sensors control board, replacing the UDOO x86 Ultra used The robot has the following sensors: in the previous model. It was decided that the small form factor and machine-learning capabilities of • 1x 360° Laser Distance Scanner (LDS-01) the Jetson made this a perfect control unit for a – Provides full 360° distance data which small, low-cost rescue robot. can be used to generate maps of the environment. 3.1.1.3 Movement • 1x CO2 / TVOC Sensor (SGP30) – The Mark IV uses two 50:1 Metal Gearmotor DC Measures carbon dioxide and total volatile motors as the main driver of the tracks. The tracks organic compound levels in the are made of multiple plastic interlocking atmosphere. This is used to assist in sections with rubber pads on the top. Each track determining whether a victim is breathing is connected to the DC motor via a 12-toothed and the dangers of sending in human sprocket, and at the other end of the robot, the rescue personnel. companion sprocket is mounted on a custom • 1x Thermal IR Camera (MLX90640) – bearing mount through which a shaft is threaded to Provides thermal imaging, useful in control the paddles. The two rear paddles are identifying heat sources like a human body.