Projects

G-CART
RIT's venture into the DARPA Grand Challenge.

You can find out more about this project by visiting the project's website gcart.rit.edu

BANE
The RIT Battlebot which started as a Senior Design project in spring 2002.
The robot was designed in CAD by RIT students, Gleason Corporation generously machined the design.

The original Senior Design team built custom electronics to convert PPM signals from a standard RC receiver to PWM signals to drive the motors; which unfortunately ran into serious current handling problems.
In April of 2003, the robot was outfitted with standard IFI Motor controllers, and competed at the Robot Club & Grille in Pittsburgh, PA.

After winning 1 fight, losing another fight, and a very close call on a third fight, BANE is currently ranked 5th in the heavyweight class.
In the spring & fall of 2003, Jason Mann redid the H-Bridge boards which control the motors.
During the spring & summer of 2004 the club will redo the custom electronics to convert the PPM signal to a PWM signal.

During winter of 2003-2004 some modifications were made to the robot.
The lexan skirt was removed, and replaced with casters.
In addition, the old melted weapon motors were replaced with new beefier motors.
Future plans involve a Battlebot invitational event, which would be open to other universities.

Microbots (RoboCup)
RIT hopes to enter a RoboCup team in the 2005 competition.
The RoboCup project was started as another spring of 2002 Senior Design Project, headed by Dr. Sahin & Dr. Walter.
Last years' version of the project was a redesign of the mobile base, so that the robots would be 4WD.
There was also a different base built, which used hexapod motion (6 legs).
In order to meet the challenge of RoboCup, much work will have to be done in the 2004-2005 school year.
The majority of this work will be on the development of game behavior strategies.
Below is a picture from the original 2002 version of the project.

BORIS
BORIS is the final project in a Muscle Wires exploration kit.
Our version of BORIS is mostly complete, but has fallen into a bit of disrepair, since original construction in spring of 2003.
Future plans for the BORIS project involve integrating the Muscle Wires into a microcore circuit.
Ideally this would provide for a feedback loop capable of sensing resistance to each leg, and adjusting the gate of the robot accordingly.
However, initially experiments with this idea were not very successful.