Harvey Mudd College
Computer Science 154
Optional Final Project -- Ideas and Guidelines

Final Project Ideas

• Build a small walking robot (Stiquito or a related version, such as the Tensipede) and teach it to walk using visual feedback and a neural network.
  
  
• Incorporate a sonar-sensor into the RugWarrior or the Handy Board's design (we have one called the Rug Bat). This would require building the sonar unit from its parts. Once built, it could be used for non-contact wall following (or higher-level behaviors) from those robots.
  
  
• Build and program your own robot (e.g., a Palm-pilot robot, see this link for details about a kit for the Palm).
  
  
• Download either the Robocup "simulated league" soccer server and program a team of players. (You can also extend prior years' winners.) Also, there is a Java simluator for the medium-sized (real) robot league available, though we do not currently have five identical robots to put those simulations into practice.
  
  
• Save the Nomad! The Nomad 200 is in need of a repair to its power distribution board. This project would span a full range of levels of abstraction for a robot: from getting the hardware systems working, testing the low-level controllers for the sonar, IR, and bump sensors, installing a camera on it, and then opening its eyes... .
  
  
• If you would like to pursue computer vision, you may want to propose a vision-based task for either the Pioneer or Robix arm. Alternatively, you can work on a project on the EVID-30 camera itself, using all four axes (pan, tilt, zoom, and focus) to assist with visual tracking, for example.
  
  

Final project requirements

• Meeting
  

  About half way through the project, a team should schedule a meeting with me to evaluate progress on the final project. Be sure that you have made some demonstrable progress by this meeting! That way, we will be able to evaluate the overall scope of the project in terms of its current state.



• Write-up
  The write-up is the formal documentation for the project. Although the format is not required to adhere to any particular form, the following sections outline a common approach to covering the important points:
  • An Introduction that motivates and describes the problem and the results at a high level.
  • A Background section that explains the basics of the algorithms you applied to the problem.
  • A System Description section that provides the details of how you constructed your system, how it works, and how you tailored the algorithms described in the previous section to the problem at hand.
  • A Results section that describes how well the system performs. A format that often works well here is to first explain your evaluation techniques, provide their results, and then explain those results and what they say about the problem and about your approach(es) to it.
  • A Conclusion, usually very brief, in which you can summarize your system and the results. In addition, this is a chance to be less scientific in your opinions about the project and a chance to put it in the larger context of larger, more general problems in robotics.
  The write-up should not include a print out of code, but should indicate where that code (and, if applicable, test data) is available.



• Presentation
  The presentation is a chance to summarize your project and results compactly and an opportunity for others to hear about your work. The presentation of a final project should include a demo of your system (either a video or, preferably, a live demo). It will be given during Mudd's presentation days at the end of April.

Final project proposal

• Overall project description
  What you'd like to do and how you can evaluate it. You should consider the scope of your project here -- in particular, suggest ways that the project could be limited or simplified, if need be, as well as some ways in which it could naturally expand.



• References
  Include at least one, but preferably three or more, references to work you've found that is related to your project. Consider the similarities and differences between that work and what you'd like to do (even if just based on initial impressions). How helpful do you feel each reference will be? Include the location of the resources (web site, book title, paper reference) (that way I can get more familiar with them...).


• System and Starting point
  Explain how you intend to start the project. Particulars of the start-up include the language (and perhaps platform) under which you anticipate working Are there any hardware requirements that I need to be aware of (so we can start setting things up)? Describe in as much detail as you can a small initial piece of the project that you intend to start with. Also suggest a number of separate pieces that will comprise the whole system: what are your initial thoughts on the order in which to attack them? Are there any that will be more difficult than others?