Data Miners

Our Mission:

We are a group of undergraduate Engineering students working to create an Over Terrain Vehicle (OTV) that successfully navigates through an arena, while also completing our teams assigned missions. To learn more about the specifications of this project, navigate to the About the Project section.

Below is a video compilation of the final product of our OTV, as well as videos of it completing our specific missions. Check it out!

Transcript:

Initially, a full view of our OTV is provided where one can see through the inside of the layers, showing where each component is placed (which is explained in greater detail in the Design and Approach section). A closer look of the side is provided, allowing for a clearer sight of the wiring on the second layer, with the breadboard and arduino. Additionally, this is the side with our killswitch attached, which is the component that allows for our OTV to start on it's own and stop when the switch is flipped. This allows for our OTV to move through the course autonomously, which is one of the major requirements for this project. After this, the bottom of our OTV is shown, revealing the main components that allow for the motion of our OTV. Initially, we only had two casters to provide stability for our two-wheel design, but we quickly realized that additional casters were needed near the lift, due to the amount of weight it beared. Ultimately, multiple casters allowed for our OTV to run more smoothly along the rugged arena. Finally, the top of our OTV is shown, which is very minimalistic. We wanted to provide a neat OTV that had most of the components hidden on the inside, where the Aruco Marker was the only thing remaining on the top. This Aruco Marker was specific to our OTV and essentially connected our OTV to the Wifi module and visions system, allowing the angle and location of the OTV to be monitored and corrected.

After the design of our OTV was shown, we decided to provide some visual representations of how small and compact our OTV is. The scale shows the mass of our OTV, coming out to about .95kg (much lower than the maximum of 3kg). Then the actual size of the OTV is demonstrated by one of our team members holding it, portraying the comparison of it's size to a human. The actual movement of our OTV is then exhibited through a video of it correcting its orientation to move towards the payload. This is one of the randomized conditions that our OTV must be able to fix in the beginning of the mission (which it successfully does in the video). Moving onto the mission specific portions of the challenge, the lever arm of our OTV is shown interacting with the payload. The video proves that it has the capabilities of moving up and down into the payload and successfully extracting the correct duty cycle of 30% (which was sent to the visions system). Unfortunately, we did not get a full video of our OTV completing the course, just the specific clips of it successfully completing some of the objectives. Overall, this project was beyond rewarding to complete and has taught us a lot about the process of applying engineering practices to real life projects.

Please feel free to navigate throughout the rest of our website to learn more about the inner workings behind our OTV design :)