Project details

The overall perspective of the project

Vision

The vision of this project is to help Professor Tim Denham and his research team to automate the archaeological process and facilitate the classification of wild and domesticated seeds’ remains.

Goal

The goal of this project includes two parts. The first goal is to do research and develop an automated, robotic microdrill for the automatic process in archaeology, including studying existing machines with similar characteristics, implement conceptual design in form of 3D modelling and verify the design using animation and simulation. The second part is to implement the machine learning algorithm to discriminate the domesticated and wild plant seeds’ remains, this could be an optional topic.

Challenges

Restricted to the budget and time, the physical robotic microdrill may not be built completely. Most of the design and simulation will be implemented on computer. In addition, the organic remains in pottery sherd are very small (1mm-5mm), thus, to subsample the remains within sherd accurately is quite challenging. In terms of developing machine learning algorithm, it requires us to analyse the 3D data points and create an unsupervised learning algorithm for classification, which is a complicated problem. This second problem would be considered if we have enough time. Finally, affected by the pandemic situation, the meetings are mostly hold via zoom.

Objective and deliverables

The objective of this project could be divided into two parts which have been mentioned in visions. The first automatic robotic drill stage part can be achieved in the following steps.

  • Analyse the client’s needs related to automating archaeological process.

  • Turn the client’s needs into specific customer’s requirements.

  • Add the technical analysis to form the functional requirements.

  • Do literature review and work on the conceptual design.

  • Implement detailed design to enrich conceptual idea.

  • Review the whole project and discuss the outcome with customer.

  • Implement the prototype and make some test.

  • Write the technical report and summarize the experience.

The stages are the same for the machine learning part.

Requirement analysis

This section introduces the stakeholder needs and requirements for the project. Firstly, the stakeholders are considered based on what we have identified in the ConOps document. Then, the objectives and requirements of the project will be studied. These requirement analysis form the basis of the conceptual design, linking the objectives and requirements to design criteria and decision making. Next, the users and interfaces are considered and finally the operational environment, as well as standards and technical regulations will be examined alongside the lifecycle and constraints.

Functional analysis

Functional analysis is to translate system-level requirements into detailed functional design norm by a top-down process, the result of which is a functional architecture with specific system requirements linked to related system function. The functional analysis set a bridge for system requirements and detailed design. Functional requirements refer to lower-level functions derived from system requirements which are higher-level goals. Functional requirements analysis helps to present a good understanding of what functions the system is required to achieve.After functional analysis, the synthesis of solutions appears.

System architecture

A Functional Architecture is an architectural model that identifies system function and their interactions. It defines how the functions will operate together to perform the system mission(s). Generally, more than one architecture can satisfy the requirements. Usually each architecture and its set of associated allocated requirements have different cost, schedule, performance, and risk implications. The functional architecture is used to support functional and performance test development. It also supports development, along with the physical architecture, of verification tasks that are defined to verify the functional, performance and constraint requirements. A system will have a functional and Physical Architecture.