Time Flies When You're Having Fun

It’s been almost 18 months since I last updated the site, and since then a lot has changed. To make a long story short, I got a new job at a robotics startup in Munich, packed my bags and left Japan. There are a lot of things that I miss about the Land of the Rising Sun - friends and colleagues, delicious food, incredibly efficient public transportation and 24 hour convenience stores come immediately to mind. However, Germany, and Bavaria in particular, has some perks as well - great work-life balance, easy access to the Alps (and the rest of Europe for that matter), Oktoberfest, Christmas markets, to name a few.

Drone and Docking Station Design

After moving from Rapyuta Robotics’ software team to the hardware team in mid-2017, I got the opportunity to help with the design and manufacturing of the Beta generation of our drone and docking station. The design goals for the Beta generation were extremely ambitious - in particular, the ability to survive outdoors year-round and the ability to autonomously land and charge. While with every iteration we discover new challenges to overcome, the hope is that more problems are solved than are created.

Quadrotor Acrobatics

During my tenure as a Robotic Software Developer at Rapyuta Robotics, I had the opportunity to work on a series of technical demonstations designed to show off our expertise in mobile robotics and controls.

Over the course of several months, myself and the other engineers working on the project produced a number of demonstrations with our nimble indoor quadrotors and ground vehicles, including a choreographed dance, quadrotor pole-balancing and ground vehicle flips. The fruits of our labour can be seen in the montage video below:

Autonomous Boat Project

Goal

Design a boat capable of navigating a 3 meter by 6 meter pool without human intervention or control, while maximizing the value of speed (i.e lap time) squared divided by mass. The dimensions of the vehicle were constrained to be able to fit into a cube of 30 cm.

Electronics

The first thing our team did was build a test platform (shown below) in order to test our electronics. Obstacles avoidance was accomplished using a combination of IR range sensors and ultrasonic sensors, and a compass/gyro for determining the orientation of the boat during manoeuvers. The test platform used a single small motor and a rudder for propulsion and steering.

Real-time Estimation of Electric Vehicle Mass Using CAN Bus Signals

The Goal

Real-time mass estimation was one of my projects during my coop term in Singapore. The goal of the project was to use CAN bus signals to estimate the mass of an electric vehicle (the Mitsubishi iMiEV, seen below) in real time, without augmenting the vehicle with any additional sensors. Accurate mass estimates can be used for numerous purposes, including fleet management and better range to empty estimates.

CAN Bus Signals

Modern vehicles have numerous sensors built in, including wheel encoders, torque sensors and electrical sensors. The challenge part is knowing which signal belongs to which sensor. All of the signals are transmitted using the same format, which can be seen in the figure below: