Objective

The objective behind this project is to cut down on time wasted waiting to receive our orders from the busy restaurants on campus (e.g. Chick-fil-A). As full-time students, we experience a restrictive time window for lunch due to our tight schedules so, when we spend 20 out of the 30 minutes we have loafing around in await for our meal, it takes away from what is supposed to be a midday break where we can recharge and relax as we enjoy what we’re consuming. Rather, it becomes a stressful contest of how fast can you finish an entire combo and still have time to walk to your next class. Additionally, it would offer students and faculty alike the chance to be more productive as they won’t have to remove themselves from their workspace to acquire sustenance. FoodieRover is a small self-navigating robot that doubles as a food convoy. Our grandest goal for this project is to design FoodieRover to be able to detect objects. Obstacle detection is no small feat, especially when dealing with active traffic (moving objects). Examples of active traffic on our campus could range from human feet, squirrels, bikes, scooters, skateboards, and even golf carts. This service coupled with the GPS dedicated hardware (e.g. magnetometer) will enable FoodieRover to come up with new routes for itself on the fly. Which leads us into our next goal of this project, which is to showcase our ability to integrate varying electrical components together. For the processes already described above we would require a microcontroller with wifi capabilities (possibly a microprocessor instead if the code is too heavy). Other components we have to consider are the battery pack, motors for the tracks, locking mechanism, and camera. The locking mechanism is a feature we want to include within the food storage container so that the food won’t be stolen. To couple this lock and key pad, we’d also like to create an interface for cellular devices that can communicate with FoodieRover (i.e. provide tracking information, notification when FoodieRover has arrived) for both the customer and restaurant to utilize. As for the camera, we’re interested in implementing computer vision to enhance FoodieRover’s obstacle detection capabilities but also plan on using it for surveillance purposes.