DCU engineering students design robot taxis
Monday 26 March 2007

Sarah Deenihan, Ciarran Grall, Robert Sherry - Students on the BEng in Mechatronic Engineering

The School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University held its annual mobile robotics competition on Friday 16 2007 . The event, sponsored by Farnell Ireland, pitted teams of students against each other in a bid to design and build a “RoboCab” – an intelligent driverless robotic taxi. RoboCabs drive, collect and eject passengers, sound horns and flash lights, all without the assistance of a driver. Each RoboCab controls itself – there are no joysticks or remote controls sending instructions to the cars. Six teams competed this year for the title of RoboCab champion.

The competition is the culmination of a 3rd year module, coordinated by Dr. Seán Marlow and Dr. Noel O’Connor, both lecturers in the School of Electronic Engineering. It is taken by students on the Electronic, Mechatronic & Digital Media Engineering undergraduate degree programmes.

Students work in small teams and are given six weeks to design and build their RoboCabs. According to Dr Marlow, the project integrates a number of different aspects of engineering. “Students have to design the mechanical structure of their robot using Lego building blocks and various gearing mechanisms, decide what electronic sensors to use and how to connect these to the controlling micro-processor. They then have to write the software that provides instructions to the micro-processor that acts as the RoboCab’s brain”

Dr O’Connor adds: “The project is designed to provide students with an opportunity to participate in a real engineering task, similar to one they will eventually encounter in the work place. Students are responsible for managing their own work and allocating tasks amongst themselves. Its hard work with lots of pressure, particularly in the run up to the competition, but its also fun.”