With the struggles of raising capital and support this year to support Brehm Preparatory School's FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition Team Megahurts, the team is focusing on some projects that have fallen by the wayside, which are less financially demanding.
The first is to bring the Dune Buggies back to operational status and configure one to drive autonomously! That's correct, Team Megahurts will be training a new class of high school students interested in robotics & STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) by designing, building and integrating an autonomous driver control system in one of the team's off road buggies.
The concept is simple, but the execution is a very complicated process, especially since safety is a major concern. In principle, the larger buggy will be manually driven, while the smaller buggy follows autonomously - that means no one will be driving it!
Some of the problems the students will have to solve are object avoidance, evaluation of risk/danger factors, fusion of sensor data, locating and tracking of the lead buggy, and gracefully and safely handling system failures.
This project provides a great outlet for our advanced students and all of our newcomers. The first couple of days the team met, they were introduced to basic mechanics and engine maintenance.
The students removed any visibly damaged parts, drained and changed all of the fluids, then reassembled the radiator hoses and any other damaged or worn parts. Still left for repair are the ignition system and right front control arm. We expect to have the engine running within the next week. The students seemed to enjoy themselves and are very anxious to take it for a spin.
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