Project Background

As part of my master's degree in engineering, I participated in a group research project during my final year. Based on our interests, each group was assigned a supervisor and a project. In my case, our group was tasked with designing a solar-powered delivery robot, akin to the Amazon Scout. While we had the freedom to determine the project's scope, we were provided with some guidelines, which included:

• The project has a budget of £500
• The system should have some degree of atonomy
• Simulation of the system should be created

The project was divided into three distinct sections:

• Mechanical: This phase encompassed the design of the robot's body, the arrangement of components, and the creation of omni-wheels to manage costs effectively.
• Electrical: In this part, we focused on constructing power flow circuits for battery charging and discharging.
• Control: The final section revolved around implementing autonomy within the system and intergrating it with the systems motor microcontroller.

Despite my limited experience in microcontroller programming and some rustiness in Python, I eagerly chose to take on the control aspect of the project because it held the greatest allure for me. The challenge was invigorating, and I had a strong desire to expand my knowledge and skills in this domain. Additionally, I wished I had more opportunities to engage with coding during my time at university, so I was delighted to have this chance to delve deeper into it.

This project was, without a doubt, one of my favorite modules during my degree. The unstructured nature of the module provided me with the freedom to explore a wide range of solutions, each with varying degrees of success. It was a valuable learning experience that taught me a lot about researching and implementing solutions in a coding environment. I'm also incredibly pleased that my hard work was reflected in my mark of 89, which underscores the effort I dedicated to the project. If you would like to read the final report of the project click here.