Projects
Hybrid Vehicle Development Team
The Hybrid Vehicle Development Team (HVDT) is dedicated to developing hybrid technologies that will increase fuel efficiency and reduce pollution of future on-road vehicles. This multidisciplinary team includes undergraduate students from several departments of Cal Poly’s College of Engineering. HVDT sets out to prove that performance, economy, and versatility can come in one package, and to demonstrate the capabilities of a hydraulic hybrid design.
Vehicle Pre-Crash Detection Project
Professors Charles Birdsong and Peter Schuster are working with students to investigate the technology of vehicle pre-crash detection.
Time-lapse Video as a Reflection Tool for Collaborative Design
Dr. Louis Rosenberg has been employing time-lapse video as a novel pedagogical intervention for enhancing student reflection in group design experiences.
Pattern Recognition and Following by a Robot
Professor Niku and graduate student Terral Ayson-Beanum are creating a robotic system that recognizes patterns, stores the information, and cuts materials into the same pattern.
First Person Observation Technology to Support Children with Autism
Dr. Louis Rosenberg has been developing First Person Remote Observation (FPRO) that enables parents, caregivers and educators to view the world through the eyes of an autistic child.
Speaking with Hands: Creating Hands to Communicate with Deaf-Blind Individuals
Professor Niku is developing an artificial hand that enables people to communicate with blind-and-deaf individuals by finger-spelling.
Hexor, the Six-Legged Robot
Garran Gossage, the leader of this team project, spent three years designing this six-legged robot to autonomously walk through rough terrain, up steep slopes, and up stairs.
Sensor Motes Project
This is not the typical club project. One of the Sensor Motes Project's goals is to create a wireless sensing, computing, and communications infrastructure which should be very useful to many robotics projects.
BotShop User Manual
"BotShop" is a robotics workshop sponsored by the Robotics Club to give freshman, sophomores, and juniors a jump-start into robotics. This user manual, full of visual guides and tutorials, applies interdisciplinary engineering towards creating robotics.
Caddy/ALF: RoboRodentia 2005 entry
Caddy is the codename for the Robotics Club's entry for the 2005 RoboRodentia competition. Their robot navigates through a maze searching for three randomly placed golf balls, collect them, and then deposit the balls in the “nest” at the end of the maze.
Spybot
Spybot is a two-year long project aimed at creating a machine that can act autonomously as well as work under remote control. Destined as the Robotics Club's Robo-Magellan entry for 2006, this machine finds and retrieves information and objects in an organic, real-life environment.
Robo-Magellan Robot
Robo-Magellan is Scott Barlow and Tyson Messori's senior project, which uses many of the components from a previous robotics project. Barlow and Messori are entering Robo-Magellan into a competition where it must run an obstacle course of 500-1000 feet--the catch is that the robot is not controlled by anyone, but has to make its own decisions about how to avoid or deal with obstacles in its way.
Ultrex Mechanical Ox
Ultrex Business Solutions asked the Cal Poly Robotics Club to help them animate a static plywood billboard of the Ultrex Ox at Sinsheimer Field. The goal was to simulate the ox shown in the 1988 Hollywood movie, Bull Durham, which wags his tail, blinks his eyes bright red, and spews smoke out of his nostrils.
Articular Cartilage Tissue Engineering
The Cal Poly Biomechanics Group are researching the development of an analytical cartilage growth model and experimental protocols to characterize the generation of articular cartilage to help find a successful way to create cartilage tissue.
Diagnosing Malfunctions on Water-Based Machinery
Professor Xi Wu is developing vibration-based methods to diagnose malfunctions of rotating machinery.
Golf Club Fitting
Cal Poly Professor Tom Mase is researching an algorithm to match golfers' swings to the ball and club that best fits them.
Vectoring Thrust Research is funded by NASA
Recent research by Professors Tom Carpenter and Bill Murray may well provide a cost-effective means for commercial launch ventures into space...
Human Powered Vehicle
The goal of the Human Powered Vehicle Team is to produce a new vehicle every year for collegiate competition. Currently, Cal Poly is one of only three schools that has raced in each ASME competition. Cal Poly has been and remains one of the top contenders in the collegiate races.
Sidekick: RoboRodentia 2006 Entry
In 2006, members from the Robotics Club successfully completed create two robots for the RoboRodentia challenge: one that would pass balls and one that would fire balls. The robots would also have to hug a wall and communicate with each other.
Underwater ROV Project
The purpose of this project to create an underwater, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capable of completing the challenges of the MarineTech ROV Competition via manual control. Additionally, the team hopes to add autonomous capability for future MarineTech challenges.
RoboRodentia 2007 Entry
This year the Robotics Club is focusing on developing three small robots to work together in accomplishing RoboRodentia's competition's goals. The robots will act synchronously based on timing, winning points by throwing balls into the opponent's court.