This was IST 4th participation in the
Festival des Sciences et Technologies .
An enthusiastic team of 3 students (Carlos Marques, Eduardo Fraga
and Nuno Portela), from IST Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering Departments, accepted the challenge of building a completely new
robot. This is our tradition: every year we want to try new solutions, and to
learn more and more. The new vehicle is a "tricycle-like" kinematic structure,
with a front drive and steering wheel. The 90 W drive motor gives
it enough power and speed to run faster than the other competitors. The 60 W
steering motor is fast and powerful enough to ensure a smooth track following.
Expanding the camera & mirror system which gave us the 1997 industrial design
prize in our class, we have now two cameras: one to follow the track, the other
to look ahead and anticipate straight lines, curves, interruptions and obstacles.
This means that we need two Pentium motherboards linked by Ethernet to
accomplish all the required image processing and vehicle guidance. Of course,
as the pioneers in regaining the track after an interruption without using the
retroreflectors, we commited ourselves to do it in the forthcoming years.
The team is supervised by Profs. Pedro Lima
and Carlos Cardeira.
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The whole team (without the photographer, Pedro Lima) and the members
of the 1998 jury. From left to right: Carlos Cardeira, Cristophe Plot (President
of the Ethic Committee), Houssine Chetto (President of the jury),
Eduardo Fraga, Pedro Aparício, Rodrigo Ventura, Carlos Marques, Nuno Portela.
On the back, you can see the Ford Galaxy kindly lent by AutoEuropa.
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The 1998 participation was sponsored by
Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia , Sony, Banco Comercial
Português, Ambassade de France au
Portugal and IST (including
the Mechanical and the Electrical Engineering and Computers departments).
