Mars Rover
The OSU Robotics Club Rover Team was formed in 2008, when they took first place when they competed in the 2008 University Rover Challenge. The University Rover Challenge is a competition organized by the Mars Society and held annualy at their base in Hanksville, UT.
Teams build remote-controlled rovers which are required to complete several different tasks, including a construction task which involves manipulating objects on a control panel, and a science task where teams find and document the existance of extremophiles.
For more information, see the Mars Rover main page.
Aerial Project
The OSU Robotics Club Aerial Team was formed last year with a goal of competing in the 2009 International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC). The IARC is an annual collegiate autonomous aerial robotics competition. The competition attempts to further the state of the art in aerial robotics by posing challenges that are not yet possible using current technology.
The 2009 competition was held at the University of Puerto Rico in July. Teams were challenged to build a robot capable of entering and navigating through a nuclear reactor building, locating a control panel, and sending a video stream back to a base station in order to provide reactor operators with information about a malfunctioning reactor core. These tasks had to be completed autonomously in under 15 minutes with a platform weighing under 1.5kg.
Visit the Aerial Project's website for more information.
Swarm
This year is the first year for the Oregon State University Robotics Club to open up a brand new division: Swarm Robotics Soccer. The competition we will be competing in is the 8th Annual RoboGames competition April 15-17, 2011 in San Mateo, California. The Swarm Robotics Soccer Team is composed of electrical, mechanical, and computer science majors, all of which collaborate and work together to be successful in the Competition. Our challenge is to design and assemble 5 intelligent working robots to communicate with one another to score goals on the soccer field and out-play the opponent in 5 vs. 5.
The 5 robots all have antennas which receive a signal through wireless communication from the host computer. In order for the robots to know where to be positioned with respect to the soccer ball (golf ball) a Vision System is used to sense the robots. Each robot has its own colored patch atop of its frame to determine which side the robot is on and for the Vision System to send a signal to the host computer. The host computer then will send a signal to the robots to actuate the robots solenoid actuators as well as their gear motors in a certain direction, speed, and acceleration.
View their work here.