our Innovation project journey

How did we come up with these ideas?

• We talked to multiple different Archaeologists, such as Dr. Seth Schneider from UWM Milwaukee, and Ms. Anna Cannizzo from OshKosh Public Museum. They both shared stories of how they or their colleagues were injured by animals while working at archaeological excavation sites. 

• This inspired us to create a solution for animal damage on archaeological sites. While our first solution tackled a wide range of animals and sites, Dr Schneider told us to narrow our solution, after which we picked the American Southwest as our targeted location and snakes as our targeted species. 

• We also completed 12 hours of in-person training with a software engineer, Mr. Sudhanshu Dixit. He taught us how to program and implement a Raspberry Pi into our robot to increase versatility and open a vast range of upgrades. He also taught us multiple other concepts, such as PWM in motors and analog-to-digital electrical conversion. 

• After implementing a Raspberry Pi 5, we also added a camera that would detect snakes and send alerts to archaeologists. This would be possible through our future model, using a TensorFlow chip and animal detection software. 

• We would add all this through our companion app for the Serpent Scentry, connecting the archaeologists directly to the robot and allowing the robot to check on them in dangerous conditions and for the archaeologists to monitor the Serpent Scentry through an RTK GPS. 

• Finally, we added extra modularity between tires and treads for different terrains in the Southwest and a wireless docking station to charge the robot for patrolling around the perimeter of the site.

Diagrams