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I just got done with my MRSD team’s first progress presentation for our capstone project. I feel super good!

Link to recording of the entire presentation

Some background

My MRSD capstone project runs over 3 semesters (Sep 2022 — Dec 2023). The end-goal in the first semester is concept development and working out the systems design. At the end of semester two and three, we have the behemoths of Spring Validation Demo (SVD) and Fall Validation Demo (FVD) respectively.

My Project

A one-line description of our project idea is –

Human-robot collaborative search and rescue in low-light and narrow cluttered environment.

Our team name is the NightWalkers and the robot will be named as the DarkBot.

Our team has been through some pretty interesting experiences. We went down from a five-membered to a four-membered team last week. The original project topic was Heterogeneous Multi-robot Search and Rescue. I know, reallly cool!

We are no longer focusing on heterogeneous nor multi-robot nor rescue. The space of S&R is vast and we always had to narrow down our focuses. So we did, and at this moment, I’m super excited with our current pillars of focus:

  • Local planning close to obstacles and around narrow doors
  • Low-light object detection
  • Human intervention in robot autonomy

And most of all, I’m very grateful for my current team. There were communication gaps initially. That’s why when one of our members switched team, it took me by surprise. But from my experience this past week, everyone in the current team is an asset. And that I’m grateful about.

Back to Today

This week marked the first round of class presentations for the capstone projects. It’s surreal — other teams are working on lunar robots, pipe inspection robots, gap-crossing robots, telepresence robots. Listening in to the presentations gets monotonous and a little boring, but I can only envision what these presentations would like a few months from now. Live robot demos!

Of all the projects, I am most excited about my own. This project was literally what I had dreamt of working upon in my Statement of Purpose! And here I am.

In my project, there’s exploration, there’s planning, there’s impact. As the program progresses, I hope not to tunnel vision myself into seeing this as just a project. I want to do justice to the potential impact that my project can have — impacting the lives of first responders. Our work here doesn’t have to change the industry; even if it solves just one piece of the puzzle, I will feel I have done justice to my resources and my talents.