ERAU Robotics

Welcome to the Robotics Laboratory

Robotics and Mechanical Engineering

The Robotics track of the Mechanical Engineering Degree Program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus provides a strong undergraduate education with a focus on the design of robotic systems for aerospace applications such as autonomous ground, air or space vehicles.

The robotics curriculum combines a strong emphasis on the fundamentals of engineering kinematics, dynamics and controls with integrated analysis and design topics ranging from robotics real-time control, sensor integration, probabilistic robotics and mechatronics.

Numerous hands-on lab and design experiences using industrial hardware and real-time software provide students the opportunity to use their knowledge, test their analysis, and work in a team environment.

News!

Senior Robotics Capstone Team to Compete in NASA Lunabotics Challenge

Prescott, Ariz., Feb. 20, 2011 -- The Senior Robotics Capstone Preliminary and Detail Design teams have completed the design and nearing the completion of fabrication for entering a vehicle in the upcoming NASA Lunabotics Challenge. The vehicle is 100% student designed and fabricated using skills learned in various student projects including the Jet Dragster Team. See the completed chassis with carbon fiber suspension below.

Lockheed Martin Donates $10,000 to Expand Robotics Development at Embry-Riddle's Prescott Campus

Prescott, Ariz., Dec. 8, 2008 -- Lockheed Martin has donated $10,000 to expand robotics exploration at the College of Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott campus. The gift will help more students learn about robotics and will help to promote interest and inspire innovation in the field, such as the student-designed underwater remote-controlled rescue robot, “Medusa,” which won first place in the university division at the National Underwater Robotics Challenge recently held in Chandler, Ariz.

Based on the University’s mission to support robotics and unmanned aviation vehicle research, the Lockheed Martin donation is part of a recent expansion at the University, according to Prescott Chancellor Dan Carrell. “Embry-Riddle has invested in a new Robotics Laboratory in the College of Engineering, to support engineering robotics education and student projects and to promote multidisciplinary robotics and autonomous vehicle research.”

The lab now boasts a six-degree-of-freedom industrial assembly robot to support traditional manufacturing robotic design and a series of mobile robotics platforms for autonomous research. For ground-based mobile robotics, the lab uses differential drive robots that integrate microprocessor-controlled pan-tilt cameras for computer vision, embedded Linux computers, and dedicated motor controllers. In support of underwater autonomous robotics, the lab is home for the “Medusa” student project enabling further national autonomous competition.

The Lockheed Martin gift will be instrumental in expanding the lab facilities to add a mechanical/electronics component to the curriculum. “Robotics, with their mechanisms, actuators, and sensors, are highly dependent on electronics for processing and control. A multidisciplinary education that includes electronics and real-time systems is key to preparing our aerospace and mechanical engineering students to help them develop their design approach, research, and future value to employers,” said Dr. John Nafziger, head of the Robotics Laboratory. “We’ve added new computers and instrumentation for data acquisition and for real-time sensor filtering and motor control.”

“We’re proud to be able to support the communities where our employees live and work. It’s particularly important to us that this gift will be used to encourage students’ interest in science, math, and engineering, and inspire a future generation of aviation leaders,” said Dan Courain, vice president of Lockheed Martin Transportation Services.

ERAU Underwater Robotics Compete at NURC

Prescott, Ariz., June 23, 2008 – A military transport airplane has just gone down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Senegal. It was carrying a world-renowned scientist, four vials of an anti-Ebola virus serum, and a hand-held computer with notes for fighting an Ebola disease outbreak in central Africa. Your mission: send a remote-controlled rescue robot into the sunken plane’s fuselage and bring back the serum and the hand-held computer.

This crisis is fiction, but it could easily be fact. It was the simulated scenario faced by three first-year students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who won first place in the university division at the National Underwater Robotics Challenge, held June 6-8 in Chandler, Ariz. Eduardo Moreno, Cory Ravetto, and Rene Valenzuela, who are aerospace engineering majors at the University’s Prescott, Ariz., campus, designed and built their winning vehicle, “Medusa,” in only three months.

The robot’s domed shape – medusa is Spanish for “jellyfish” – stood out among other contestants’ box-shaped entries and also won the judges award for most unique design at the three-day competition. “We just combined our knowledge,” said Ravetto, who met his teammates last year in freshman engineering classes. Aside from a few electronic parts, the Embry-Riddle students manufactured all hardware for the robot. “Because there were only three of us, we had to do everything. It taught me a lot about engineering,” said Valenzuela, who worked on the robot’s sensors and video camera and “drove” the vehicle.

Student teams were judged on their technical report, oral presentation, and simulated rescue mission. During the rescue, teams had to make their remote-controlled underwater robots locate a submerged aircraft at night in a pool, navigate inside the fuselage, and perform a variety of tasks. In addition to retrieving the four vials of serum and the hand-held computer, the robots had to measure the temperature where the serum was found to ensure its viability, measure the depth of the transport plane, and retrieve the “black box” flight recorder from the downed plane’s cockpit. All tasks were performed at night to replicate the low light levels of the ocean floor and used remote control and onboard camera feeds.