Multidisciplinary Project

In this capstone project of the first year of the MSc Robotics, you will be challenged to use all the knowledge and skills you have gathered so far. Within a multidisciplinary team of up to 5 people, you will develop and test software for use in a real robot whilst working together for a real client in an industrial setting. The estimated workload of this course is 18 hours per week over 8 weeks.

In this project, you will go beyond producing a software solution for a robot. You will also implement and test your software in a real robot and report and present your results as well as document your code, mirroring industry practice. Just like you would in industry, you will likely spend only 50% of your time coding and testing and the other 50% on meetings, systems design, report writing, (preparing) presentations, and documenting your code. All together, you will demonstrate that you can analyze a problem, propose a robotic solution to it, properly design your system, realize, and test it.

In this project, you work closely on an industrial/societal problem, and invited industry clients will evaluate your solution and project communication throughout the project. Each of you will sign up with a specialist role in mind within the project, in which you are responsible for a specific part of the software design and implementation. It is no longer possible for one person to do all the programming. The specializations for which you can express a preference when you enroll are:

- human-robot interaction,

- navigation, planning, control

- perception,

and relate to the different disciplines within the MSc Robotics.

Within your team, you are expected to make a translation of societal issues from different perspectives (human, sustainability, safety, ethics, economic, etc.) into intelligent robot solutions. Practically, each student team develops a complete, integrated software package for a complex robot system. You develop and test in a simulated environment, and then implement it in a real robot during the course before presenting your results in the final presentation to your client at the end.

This course consists of 5 iterative phases with continuous reporting varying in lengths:

- Phase 0: Introduction, meet your team, and get to know your robot.

- Phase 1: Initiation and Planning - Getting organized, defining and planning your project, diving deeper into the on-board functionalities of your robot.

- Phase 2: Design and Execution - Software architecture design, initial (simulation) implementations and demonstration of concept to the client.

- Phase 3: Implementation - Further design and implementation of your solution on your robot.

- Phase 4: Testing and Completion - Finalizing your project and final reporting and code documentation, with a presentation of your implementation for the client in week 4.8.

A detailed schedule will be available on Brightspace after the introduction lecture, likely in week 3.8.