General information
| Team name: | Harper Adams |
| Institution: | Harper Adams University |
| Department: | Engineering |
| Contact: | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
Team details
| Mentors: | Sam Wane |
| Members: | Jacob Smith, Max Thorne, James Townley, Alec Henderson |
Robot – basic information
| Web page: | http://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/ | ||
|
Dimensions: (W ×L ×H) |
300 x 500 x 300 | ||
| Weight: | 7kg | ||
| Num. of wheels: | 4 | Turning radius: | 0.5m |
| Rain resistance: | Medium (≈IP63) | ||
Robot – mechanical details
| Drive concept: | 4 wheel drive |
| Steering: | 4 wheel steer |
| Special characteristics: | 2 wheels steer, 4 wheel steer and crab steer are all possible |
Robot – electrical details
| Powered by: | 12V NiMh and 7.2V NiMh batteries | |||
| Motors: | Maverick scout drive motor | |||
| Controller: | Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller | |||
| Sensors: | Camera: | Possibly | Compass: | Yes |
| Ultrasonic: | Yes | Gyroscope: | No | |
| Infrared: | No | Accelerometer: | No | |
| Laser: | No | Mechanical: | No | |
| Other: | Multi-ray LED scanner | |||
| Communication: | RS232 serial communication for the LED scanner. | |||
Robot – Software
| Operating system: | Arduino |
| Programed in: | Arduino programming environment |
| Tools: | - |
| Other: | The controller interfaces with both the LED scanner and ultrasonic sensors, creating a primary and a secondary navigational system. |
Robot – Strategy
| 1st task: | For tasks 1, our strategy is to complete the course fast, but also reliably. We have used proportional steering control to navigate down the rows, resulting in smooth operation. We can also use the ultrasound sensory if the primary sensing technique (LED scanner) fails. |
| 2nd task: | We have used a repeated sample strategy to ensure that the headlands aren’t falsely detected, while we can also use the ultrasound sensory if the primary sensing technique (LED scanner) fails. We have a row counting strategy to navigate at the headlands. |
| 3rd task: | TBC |
| Free style: | TBC |
Robot – Investment
| Work hours: | ≈360 hours |
| Components: | |
| Other: | |
| Sponsored by: | The team is grateful for financial support from the Douglas Bomford Trust and the Claas Foundation enabling us to successfully compete in this competition and to allow future teams from the University to build upon our work. |
Problems / Challenges
| At the time of writing this we are having trouble with weed detection (Task 3), using Pixy (CMUcam5). |
Other
| - |
