Engineering students create intelligent taxis
1 May 2009

Engineering students Adam O'Toole, Sam Hampshire, Ciaran O'Neill and Kelechi Anyanwu won the annual mobile robotics competition called ‘Robocab’ on Wed 24 March 2009. The competition is organised by the School of Electronic Engineering.

The event, sponsored by Farnell Ireland, pits teams of students against each other in a bid to design and build a ‘RoboCab’ – an intelligent driverless robotic taxi. RoboCabs drive, collect and deposit 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.  Nine prototypes competed this year for the title of RoboCab.

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

According to Prof O’Connor, 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. Furthermore, they then have to write the software that provides instructions to the micro-processor and enables the RoboCab to drive, pick up passengers and take them to their desired destination, all without human intervention.”