Forestry Robot Design (2020)

Abstract Forestry Robot DesignRobotics field has experienced remarkable scientific and technological advances for superiorinteractions among humans, machines and environments in various practical settings such asnatural disasters, autonomous vehicles, unknown terrains, or humanoids. Robots in forests ofunknown terrains have illustrated their inherent benefits during normal operations or naturalemergencies as aerial robots can provide monitoring and transportation while autonomous landrobots can navigate to remote areas or can support the regrowth of forest in case of fire byaccelerating the human intervention and by collecting detailed soil samples for effectiverevegetation. Robotics in forestry industries such as parks, fire fighting, monitoring, ortransportation operations has also been addressed in competitions at different levels withappropriate open-ended robotic design sophistications as well as challenges, e.g., Forest ParkRobotics challenge for high school or IEEE competitions for college level students, whileassociated engineering design concepts are covered in variety of robotics curricula.A two-course robotics curriculum, sponsored by National Science Foundation grant (NSF-____),was developed at _____ University (_____), a minority serving institution, by Electrical andMechanical Engineering faculty members to alleviate faculty, space, funding, and hands-onlaboratory requirements for a comprehensive robotics program. As the robotics curriculum andits educational structure as well as effectiveness were covered during the previous ASEEconference, this study presents the NSF-sponsored robotics curriculum impact as well as linkageon engineering design process and describes the design, justification and construction of anautonomous robot to retrieve soil samples during the IEEE 2013 Region-5 robotics competitionthat simulated a forest fire region filled with different types of obstacles and requiredautonomous robot navigation and effective path planning. Under the close supervision andassistance of the project faculty members, the student design team, four senior-level studentsfrom both Electrical and Mechanical engineering departments with majority Hispanics,investigated similar practical conditions and corresponding solutions, studied a large number ofdesign alternatives and assembled a functional autonomous robot to perform the required taskswhile gaining valuable creative open-ended system design, teamwork and interpersonal skills,and time management experiences. The robotics curricula supported the design process byproviding fundamental robotic theoretical as well as practical hands-on concepts, steadymonitoring and feedback via weekly team design presentations, and by supervising on projectmanagement and timeline issues.The project evaluation indicated the engineering design effectiveness of the robotics curriculasuch that the participating students were able to design successful autonomous robots for asimulated forest fire environment and the students stated increase in their engineering design andproblem solving skills due to the robotics course by marking 'A Great Deal' or 'A Lot' optionsat 75% and 91% rates, respectively.