With the spring semester coming to an end, a new class of leaders have been elected for the 2021-22 academic year. This team of core leadership is essential to the success of RoboJackets. Today, we would like to introduce you to who these leaders are, what they’ve done in their time in RJ, and what they look forward to in the coming year.

President: Shishir Pandit-Rao

Shishir Pandit-Rao is the newest RoboJackets President. He’s a rising third-year Mechanical Engineering student. This past year Shishir led the RoboRacing team as the Project Manager. He worked with the team to continue development of Rigatoni, their new go-kart platform, despite the challenges of the pandemic. Prior to that, Shishir was a mechanical member for RoboRacing. His favorite experience so far has been seeing Rigatoni move for the first time after over a year and a half of design and development. As President, Shishir is excited to see what the rest of 2021 holds for the organization. He is “looking forward to reinvigorating [RoboJackets] as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic,” by continuing the hands-on learning experience that he has enjoyed so much. Outside of RoboJackets, Shishir loves to spend his time cooking, especially Indian food, and watching any sports teams from his hometown of Portland, Oregon.

Vice President: Tan Gemicioglu

The Vice President this year is Tan Gemicioglu. Tan is a rising third-year, international student from Istanbul, Turkey, studying Computer Science and minoring in Physiology. He started his RJ career on the software team for IGVC working on navigation and simulation. This past year Tan has been leading the RoboNav (formerly IGVC) team as Project Manager. He led the name change to reflect the inclusion of the URC competition (read more here), another effort he organized. Tan is looking forward to having in-person meetings and events again in the coming year. He has “missed the energy of having all of us in that environment” and is “really excited to be able to reconnect with everyone beyond the screen.” He misses events like the organization-wide hackathon in 2019, where each team worked on small scale demos to share at tabling events. When not working on RJ projects, he does research on wearable computing. Tan also likes to cook (he’s optimizing his lasagna recipe at the moment) and enjoys reading or watching all forms of sci-fi and fantasy. Tan also wanted to share that he has never been to CookOut, so he’s excited to finally participate in an important RoboJackets tradition when in-person dining finally opens.

Treasurer: Cade Tyler

Cade Tyler is the new Treasurer for RoboJackets. Like Shishir, he is a rising third-year Mechanical Engineering student. He is a dedicated BattleBots member, starting in the 3lb program working on Spooki (a vertical spinner) and leading the 2lb program this past year as 3lb Czar. He has “enjoyed working with and getting to know other members… as 3lb Czar,” and hopes to continue that as he works with the other teams to get them “the funds and parts necessary to build awesome robots.” When Cade is not working on awesome robots, he enjoys the outdoors, having worked at a nature center in Virginia for six years. Specifically, he loves hiking and caving.

Secretary: Sana Hafeez

The new Secretary for RoboJackets is Sana Hafeez, a rising third-year Mechanical Engineering student, minoring in Robotics. She started with RoboJackets this year on the RoboNav mechanical team. She’s been designing the arm and end effector for the new URC robot. Sana’s favorite part has been the hands-on learning she’s gotten about machine design and seeing how everyone’s work has come together to make the new robot. As secretary, she’s excited “to help get RoboJackets back into the swing of things,” with in-person general meetings and socials. Besides RoboJackets, Sana does research with the underwater robotics VIP, Aquabots, which she’s been doing since freshman year. She also likes to fence and bake cakes when she’s not dealing with robots.

Shop Manager: Christopher Bellflowers

Christopher Bellflowers is a rising third-year Mechanical Engineering student and is this year’s Shop Manager. Christopher started with the BattleBot team, working on the 3lber Huski, a vertical spinner, and continued this year working on Samuraii, the second iteration of a 30lb vertical spinner. Christopher served as Treasurer for RoboJackets this past year, but he’s already got big plans for the future of the shop space when occupancy restrictions are lifted. In his time with RoboJackets, he enjoyed the competition experience the most, particularly going to Motorama 2019. He looks forward to when competitions can be hosted in person again. In his spare time, Christopher enjoys playing guitar, especially rock and metal, and also enjoys cooking, especially his family’s recipe for fried chicken tenders.

Promotions Chair: Shail Patel

The Promotions Chair this year is Shail Patel, a rising second-year Computer Science student. This past year he spent his time with the RoboCup software team, working on the interface used to control the robots during gameplay. Shail is very excited to take on the role of Promotions Chair and is “looking forward to…promoting the RoboJackets organization” and increasing our social media presence. Besides RoboJackets, Shail is involved with a few other organizations, like Big Data, Big Impact, SGA’s IT Board, and the Chi Psi fraternity. If he isn’t doing any of those things, you can find him watching or playing basketball.

Outreach Chair: Malak Bayyari

Malak Bayyari is RoboJacket’s new Outreach Chair, the newest addition to Core leadership. Malak is a rising third-year Biomedical Engineering student. For the past two years, Malak has been working with the RoboRacing mechanical team, designing and manufacturing the steering system for Rigatoni. She’s excited to continue working on improving the system, but she’s also excited to get back to volunteering like she did before the pandemic. Malak enjoyed being able to meet new friends and engage with people with a variety of backgrounds at socials and volunteer events. “I’m excited to re-engage with our community after a year of COVID,” she says, “and to create community partnerships to work together and expand [RoboJackets’] impact on STEM education in Atlanta.” Malak spends her free time baking (especially the Arabic dessert knafeh), cooking, or exploring Atlanta. When she’s not doing that, she also likes to make creative projects like jewelry or art pieces.

A big part of RoboJackets is ensuring that new members are able to contribute in meaningful ways early on in their RoboJackets career. This month, we’d like to feature some of the projects that new members are working on as a part of RoboWrestling, the newest team in RoboJackets dedicated to robotic Sumo competitions.

There are three projects we’d like to feature: an entirely new mechanical robot design, dubbed Spici, a radio board to enable more advanced communication with deployed robots, and a simulator for testing robot code without a mechanical platform.

Spici (like “Spicy”) is the newest RoboWrestling robot. Jason Katz, recently elected to the Mechanical Lead in RoboWrestling, was involved with designing the outer plastic shell for the robot. Most RoboWrestling robots have an outer shell that provides structure to support various electronics, including the sensors the robots use to identify and track enemy robots. One of the major innovations with Spici is the introduction of a hinged plow. The advantage of a hinged plow is that if an enemy robot gets under the plow, it doesn’t tilt the entire robot, shortening the lever arm and making it harder to push the robot around. Jason designed the very tip of the plow, essentially a steel knife blade that wedges under opponents. The team has made a lot of progress over the year, including completed CAD for the new robot. The team has just now started to machine some of the essential parts for assembly.

Jadon Grossberg and Jacob Nickles are working on the radio boards. The radio board is a separate electronic device with an LCD screen that communicates with corresponding radio boards in the autonomous robots that the team fields at competition. Jadon outlines three features they are looking for: “ability to look at diagnostic statistics from each robot, changing strategies at competition, and calibrating the [sensors on the] robots.” In sumo competitions, it is desirable to be able to change which strategy the autonomous robot will engage in to adapt to information you have on your opponent. Without this radio board, changing strategies would require plugging into the control board and manually uploading new code to it. With this board, the strategy change can be much quicker and could even be done between points in a single sumo match. The other two features are also valuable for maintenance and troubleshooting of the robots and will save effort. 

The team has developed the basic diagnostics tools, but the team is waiting to fine tune them when they have the radios communicating fully. The team currently has two robots that use different microcontrollers, one using an Arduino Pro Micro, and another using a Teensy 3.6. Because the radio board uses an Arduino, it was relatively easy to get the two boards to communicate, but, as Jacob says, “the Teensy seems to have a few unique issues believed to be rooted in its computation speed and register access, so we are going to debug the next time we meet.” 

Jacob and Jadon operate relatively independently in the project execution. Jadon says “I’ve relied pretty heavily on the guidance of mentors for electrical projects like soldering PCBs and checking for shorts. Programming projects have been much more independent and for those, older members feel much more like peers [as opposed to mentors].”

Jacob is also making major contributions to the third project: the sumo simulator. The basic goals of the project are to model physics interactions between two robots, test out interchangeable strategies and sensor configurations, and adjust starting parameters in each match, such as position, rotation, and simulation speed. The team has made good progress and has functional collision detection “that produces either a deadlock when the two hit head on or a victory when one strikes the other from the side.” These two situations are the most common in sumo competitions. When two sumo robots meet head to head, they engage in a push of war that often results in restarting the point, but when one robot attacks the other from the side or back, the attacker usually takes the point. This collision detection system reflects that common behavior. Different strategies are defined by a line that represents the initial motion the robot takes. To change strategies, that line can be changed and tested against any number of probable enemy strategies. The team has also implemented a method to try out different numbers of sensors that are arranged based on a robot class, but the main focus of testing thus far has been the physics and strategies.

There are also future plans for the robot. Jacob gave the following list of future improvements the team is interested in making:

• Changing our implementation of collisions to better include the frictional resistance during a hit
• The previous plan may require an overhaul of our current physics model for the robot as well
• Creating new opening gambit strategies [EG, intentionally getting out of an opponent’s way to let them drive off the edge or present their side to you] to get the upperhand in a match
• Test and create a system to make different robot selection easy
• Create simulated versions of Gucci, Kirbi, and Spici to test with
• Legal starting position checking when inputting match parameters

Jacob says that the project is “in a good position,” citing the completed collision detection system.

These projects all represent a high-impact contribution to RoboWrestling, either with a new version of a sumo robot or the development of tools that will ensure future success. The radio board and simulator directly address problems that have haunted our Sumo teams in the past, specifically in making our robots more adaptable and allowing our software team to engage in more testing and iteration before the robots are complete. Formerly, the only testing opportunities our Sumo teams have gotten are the competitions, so this simulator represents a major opportunity for us to test strategies before they face down their opponent, and the radio board enables us to readily adapt to opponents during a match.

RoboRacing is preparing their newest and fastest robot, Rigatoni, for the evGrandPrix Autonomous Series event this September. In preparation for this, RoboRacing recently held two test days, which are meetings dedicated to validating assumptions and testing the robot end to end.

These test days in particular gave the electrical and mechanical subteams critical data to continue improving their designs. Due to personnel restrictions at the shop and the amount of testing to be done on the mechanical and electrical systems, the autonomy and navigation software was not involved in these test days. The main systems tested were the steering, emergency stop, main drive, and primary braking systems.

Rigatoni’s steering system connects a stepper motor to the steering column through a belt. With the robot up on the stand, the control electronics and firmware were successful at turning the wheels in both directions. Taking Rigatoni off the stand, the team learned that in the worst case scenario (when the robot is stationary), there were several issues. The stepper motor skipped, the belt slipped, and the front wheels did not turn. The team plans to address these issues by 1) adjusting the belt sprocket sizes to give the motor more mechanical advantage, 2) changing the belt tensioner from a sprocket to a pulley, and 3) moving the tensioning pulley from the inside of the belt to the outside. These changes are meant to increase torque and reduce friction, preventing the issues observed during the test day. 

The team scored two major wins in their testing. The first was with the remote controlled emergency stop. The remote controller was able to communicate an emergency stop signal to the car, which released compressed air to apply the car’s emergency brake. With higher speed operation, having a fail-safe method of stopping the robot is key — this will enable RoboRacing to perform better and safer testing in the future. The second big win was verification that the speed control system was working properly. The vehicle’s speed is tracked using a break-beam IR light encoder (a new-member project) and motor controller. Rigatoni was able to hit a target wheel speed at the test day, and the team was able to independently verify this with a laser tachometer.

Finally, RoboRacing also spent time getting Rigatoni’s primary braking system operational. This system uses a motor and lever to actuate the brake cable, as shown in the following animation below. During the test day, the team tuned the motor controller such that the lever could apply a useful range of braking forces, and they also adjusted the location of limit switches to prevent the motor from burning out.

Test days are usually very helpful for RoboJackets autonomy teams, and this one was no exception. RoboRacing came away with critical information to improve the steering system and showed that the Rigatoni platform is getting a lot closer to being ready for autonomy testing.

At the end of each semester, usually on Reading Day, RoboJackets hosts a cookout social. The tradition was started in the fall of 2016, and usually features grilled burgers, hotdogs, and snacks. Members will often play informal matches of ultimate frisbee, soccer, or volleyball. It’s a great way for members to relax before finals, enjoy some food, and get to know their fellow RoboJackets a little better. Given the pandemic, this year’s fall cookout was cancelled, but the event was brought back for the spring in an effort to provide members with some socialization outside of their teams. For the sake of safety, officers forgoed the food in favor of focusing on games, with members playing football and ultimate frisbee.

Check out some photos from this year’s cookout as well as cookouts from years past below:

If you have more photos from cookouts past, please feel free to add them to our google photos album!