Robotics Everywhere

After spending my summer with travelling and doing my first internship, I am back at university. Weather here at south England is pretty much nice and welcoming, but it might not last long.

University

Modules in general are more focused on practise than just theory, which makes some of them to be more interesting. Compared to the last year, we also use a computer more often for modelling some problems and performing calculations to make them more realistic.

We have just finished our first group project this year. Students from our class worked in team of 4-6 members to design, build, programme and test a robot. The task was to follow a track consisting of straight and arc sections. The only allowed sensor was for sensing the motor shaft position and robot had to run on an Arduino board. Time for the project was very limited: we were given only 14 days while we were still supposed to attend regular lectures, tutorials and do other assignments. The whole task was supposed to be a preparation for our second semester group projects; probably to prepare us to how many unexpected problems might occur even while building pretty simple systems. This is the robot our group manufactured:

 
Its appearance is not particularly nice, but it is functional and easily repairable, which is an important aspect in engineering. Seeing its behaviour and accuracy was more than satisfying.

Extracurricular Activities

During annual general meeting at the of the last year, I was elected as a committee member for the student society RoboSoc for this year. In the committee, we decided to change the way the society is lead. This year we want to put more emphasis on education than on doing projects compared to the last year. After promoting our society at the bunfight, event where all 300+ university societies have their stands trying to get new members, we organised our first introductory meeting. To our surprise size of our regular meeting room was not sufficient for all the students! Now we lead weekly workshops for about 50 freshers and tens of experienced members work on running projects. Freshers are taught during the first semester how to design, manufacture and programme robots. Then they will join society projects. Transformation of an RC car into autonomous one, which will learn itself with help of artificial intelligence how to drive in a miniature city, is just one of them.

What’s next?

Next important stage in our course are January exams as those are the first which count towards our degree. First year did not count at all. Then we will choose one of several robotic projects that we will do in small groups during second semester. This project will make a great part of our overall year mark. An important decision shall be made during the second semester because we choose our focus within Mechanical Engineering and also if we want to continue in integrated Master or transfer to Bachelor. There is also an option to find a year placement and transfer to sandwich course with either integrated Master or Bachelor.
 

Robotika Všude

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