Students from Salman bin Abdualaziz University Display Impressive Projects in Collaboration with University of California Irvine

The Saudi Arabia International Program, hosted at the University of California, Irvine in conjunction with Salman bin Abdulaziz Univeristy shows off some new projects for its third year running.  Students working in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering across the Mechanical, Civil, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments have been working hard in their summer program.

In the department of Electrical Engineering, the students have been working on an Advanced Tracking Vehicle: the Pi Crawler.  Built in tandem with a Raspberry Pi Board, the tracking robot contains six multidirectional servo motors capable of movements over many different types of terrain.  The students are currently programming the robots movement capabilities, along with adding a rotating photocell plate to maximize the gain of light conversion to make the robot self sustaining in a variety of conditions.  Additionally, the students are building a stereoscopic camera and sensor system, allowing the robot to “see” in three dimensions, allowing for depth perception and independent movement and tracking.

Finally, the students are also constructing a robotic arm that can also be fitted to the robot to add a tactile function and have it perform completely independent of outside control.  We look forward to the completion of the project to see the culmination of this ambitious effort from the students of the Saudi Arabia International Program.