Guidebot: Autonomous Service Dog
Senior Design Project - EECS 467 (Autonomous Robotics) | January 2019 - May 2019

As part of a team of 4, I developed a replacement for service dogs currently assisting the visually impaired. Service dogs can be hard to train, and may cost between $40,000 - $60,000 over their lifetimes. This robot cost $2,000 to build. It is capable of fully moving in the 2D plane without turning, features silent belt driven transmissions, can map its environment in 3D, and can autonomously navigate.
The robot runs a fully custom simultaneous localization and navigation software stack and was successfully demonstrated at our senior design expo.

​Autonomous navigation of a hallway: Video

Electrical:

• Brushed DC motors powered by a lead acid battery
• Wheel sensing done using magnetic encoders

Mechanical:

• Holonomic drivebase use 4 independently suspended transmissions
• Belt drive reduces noise and unsprung mass
• Articulating 3D LIDAR mount moves about the sensor's center to reduce the complexity of frame transformation

Software:

• Simultaneous localization and navigation stack run on a BeagleBone Black and Linux laptop
• Particle filter based localization and A* navigation
• Rudimentary dynamic object detection within occupancy grid
• Cascaded PID control from overall robot velocities to low level transmission velocities

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