Mini Robotic Assistant

2022 ELE Engineering Design Project (XF07)

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Faculty Lab Coordinator

Xavier Fernando

Topic Category

Signal Processing / Communication

Preamble

Our parents and/or grandparents often need to stay alone. They might want to have a mobile robot following them at a respectful distance, carrying their medicine and reminding them to take it on time, guiding them and, alerting their kith and kin if they are in trouble, doing all this continuously and tirelessly. Designing such personal robotic assistants has become a viable task using off-the shelf components and tools such as Google' teaching machine.

Objective

In this project students will design a Mini Robotic Assistant (MiRA) that will follow an elderly or sick person wherever he/she goes and perform basic helping.

Partial Specifications

1. MiRA will distinctly identify the master using machine vision or voice identification.
2. MiRA will follow the master in a reasonable distance.
3. MiRA will avoid obstacles and avoid falling.
4. using video processing, MiRA will identify if the master has fallen.
5. MiRA will call someone if the Master is in trouble or fallen.
6. MiRA will follow simple voice commands, such as stop, turn left or turn right.
7. MiRA will remind certain pre-recorded events, such as taking the medication on time. Also, it will prevent the master from taking the medication dose twice, by mistake.

Suggested Approach

MiRA shall have a robot (moving) portion, equipped with video camera and image processing software to follow and identify the status of the master. It will have autonomous moving capability and wireless communication capability.

You may use the tools available from Google teachable machines https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/

Group Responsibilities

The group is responsible for the successful completion, integration and testing the overall project.

Student A Responsibilities

The robotic part.

Student B Responsibilities

Image processing and action identification.

Student C Responsibilities

Voice identification, recognition and audio commands.

Student D Responsibilities

Integration and communication.

Course Co-requisites

To ALL EDP Students

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, in the event University is not open for in-class/in-lab activities during the Winter term, your EDP topic specifications, requirements, implementations, and assessment methods will be adjusted by your FLCs at their discretion.