A. Electric Cars - REV

REV (Renewable energy vehicle) is a Faculty-wide project and looks at finding alternatives to petrol-based cars. These projects are suitable for students in Mechanical, Mechatronics, Electrical, Computer Engineering and Computer Science.
In its first phase, REV is converting two cars to electric drive:

• Economy car: Conversion of a 2008 Hyundai Getz to electric drive using DC technology
• Performance car: Conversion of a 2002 Lotus Elise S2 to electric drive using AC technology

web: theREVproject.com

Projects available:

1. BATTERY/CONTROLLER management for Electric Performance Car
   Design and implement circuitry for connecting the electric motor, batteries and controller box. Analyzing and experimenting with controller box, finding optimal drive parameters.
   
2. MECHANICAL DESIGNS for ELectric Performance Car
   Design of motor connection and drive train; connection to existing gear box or gear box re-design.
   Design of motor mount and battery container.
   
3. ON-BOARD INSTRUMENTATION for Economy and Performance Car
   Using a color LCD touch-sreen, develop a central car information center that can display all relevant driving information and car status info.
   
4. BLACK BOX for Electric Performance Car
   Develop a black box for a car, similar to a flight recorder in a plane. This will comprise an embedded controller, sensors including GPS, Accelerometer, Analog inputs for current/voltage and a USB memory stick for data recording.
   The project also includes the requirement for a user interface both on the black-box side (start-stop recording) as well as on the PC side (graphical presentation of results, e.g. Excel)
   
5. DRIVE-BY-WIRE for Electric Performance Car
   Conduct a study and design all components for converting a performance car to drive-by-wire. This requires gas-by-wire, brake-by-wire, steering-
   by-wire.
   Note: Our aim is to keep the car street-legal, so an essential part of this project is to make sure all legislative requirements are being met.
   

B. Driver Assistance Systems

Projects available:

1. DRIVER-ASSISTANCE SYSTEM for Lane Recognition in BMW X5
   Using an embedded system and our image processing framework ImprovCV, implement a driver-assistance system that can automatically detect
   lane markings and warn the driver acoustically of a dangerous situation.
   Note: We have existing software for lane recognition. This project will have to port this PC software to a small embedded System. Good C/C++
   knoweldge is required.
2. Vehicle detection and vehicle tracking with collision avoidance
3. Automatic braking assistant for collision mitigation
4. Porting and extending of standard OpenCV image processing functions to Improv

Projects available:

1. User Interface Implementation
2. Design of car models (graphics and physics features)
3. Design of environment models (streets, traffic signs, buildings)
   We will use true map data and recreate subsets for the cities of: Perth (AUS), Los Angeles (US), München (GER).
   Inner-city scenes as well as highway scenes will have to be modeled.
4. Design of car API and virtual sensor interfaces and implementation

This group project is to build mechanics, electronics and software for an autonomous underwater vehicle.
The goal is to participate in the new Australian AUV competition.

Link: US AUVSI competition http://www.auvsi.org/competitions/water.cfm

Projects available:

1. Echo-sounder based navigation and control
2. Vision-based detection tasks

Projects available:

1. Driving along a corridor
   The wheel-chair should be able to drive along a corridor without hitting the wall, obstacles or people.
2. Autonomous door-way passing
   The wheel chair should adjust itself and drive through a narrow door-way autonomously.
3. Navigation
   After entering a room number, the wheel-chair should autonomously find its way in the EE building and drive to the desired room.

F. Second Life|

UWA has a Second Life presence as of Oct. 2009. Goal of this project is to model interactive robots and possible electric cars developed inthe Robotics&Automation lab and bring them into Second Life.

Projects available:

1. Omni-Wheelchair
2. Biped Robots
3. EyeBot Robots
4. REV Eco+Racer

G. Augmented Reality|

Goal of this project is to develop an interactive application between real and simulated robots on one side and human operators on the other side. The set-up will include a ceiling-mounted projector that displays scenarios on a table and a ceiling-mounted camera that gives feedback about the interaction.

Projects available:

1. Graphics generation
2. Implementation of virtual (simulated) robots

H. Advanced Embedded Systems

Projects available:

1. Development of image-preprocessing routines in VHDL for FPGA
2. Development of actuator and sensor routines (motor and sensor drivers) for controller
3. Porting of all RoBIOS functions
4. Development of Monitor program

I. EyeSim Simulation Systems

For the new high-performance embedded controller, we need an new version of the EyeSim simulator, which can also emulate the new controller features such as:

• widescreen, color LCD
• touch-screen
• dual (stereo) cameras
• updated RoBIOS functions

Projects available:

1. Modify EyeSim user interface
2. Update EyeSim-RoBIOS functions