Aid Ship

The aid ship scavenges for objects in a D-Day setting (such as food sources or shelter) and plots them on a map, scouting out areas so that no one has to put themselves at risk.

Comment

Inspiration

The Aid Ship was inspired by dropships that deliver essential cargo in a Doomsday setting. We originally considered making an actual flying dropship, but scoped it down to something feasible in a 24 hour hacking period.

What it does

Though it doesn't fly, the Aid Ship rolls around in search of objects and marks them on a map, acting as a surveyor and scavenger of land. In a Doomsday setting, some environments may be unsafe for humans to traverse themselves, so the Aid Ship comes in handy by acting as a scout first and providing a map of the area.

How we built it

The Aid Ship was built using an Arduino Uno R4 WiFi to control the movements of the robot. It detects objects using an ultrasonic sensor, also programmed by the Arduino. The map marking is done by a Python script which reads the serial monitor for coordinates and writes a marker to the corresponding location on the map.

Challenges we ran into

At first, we wanted to build our project using a Raspberry Pi so that we could leverage a camera and computer vision for enhanced object detection. Unfortunately, given the time constraint, we were unable to properly connect to the Raspberry Pi without sacrificing egregious amounts of time. Before we switched to Arduino, we spent many hours troubleshooting our connection to the headless Raspberry Pi, first trying Mobile Hotspot and then trying to directly tether it to a different computer (which we unfortunately didn't have the right cable for). The Raspberry Pi would have been ideal compared to the Arduino not only because of its camera, but because it could run the Python map marking script on its own.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we finished our project despite our last-minute switch to Arduino from Raspberry Pi!

What we learned

  • Time management is critical
  • Fully explore the options available to you before jumping into a build (saves time later on)
  • How to read the Serial monitor using a Python script to transfer data from an Arduino program

What's next for Aid Ship

Aid Ship needs some tweaks to work better, such as refining its motor functions and its coordinate system. Whenever you need a small scavenging bot, Aid Ship will be there for you!

Built With

Share this project:

Updates