Projects
IEEE projects are an opportunity for undergrads to get hands-on
engineering experience by applying knowledge learned in the classroom to
challenging, competition-based design problems. By working on a project,
members solidify their understanding of the fundamentals, learn new
technical skills, and develop professional skills such as leadership,
communication, and teamwork. Academic credit is available through ECE
199. To join a project, contact the project lead by email and ask how
you can get started!
Current Projects
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 Micromouse is an annual competition in which an
autonomous robot must find its way to the center of a maze. The maze
is composed of 16x16 cells, each 18x18cm. At the heart of the UCSD
Micromouse is an ARM processor programmed with the GNU toolchain. The
robot uses optical distance sensors to find its way through the maze.
All of Micromouse's PCBs are multi-layer double-sided, laid out by
hand and custom fabbed. For debugging, the robot has an LCD display
and a Xbee wireless serial link. A single runtime-programmable power
supply board takes power from a lithium ion battery pack and converts
it to the various voltages required by the processor board, motor
controllers, and data interfaces. Learn more.
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 Natcar
is an annual undergraduate design competition in which students design
and build an autonomous race car that can negotiate a arbitrary course
in the shortest time possible. The course is marked by 1-inch-wide
white floor tape on a dark-colored background (carpet). In addition,
there is a wire under the tape driven with a 75 kHz 100mA sinusoidal
signal. The competition is held each May at UC Davis. The UCSD robot
uses several inductors to convert the changing magnetic field to a
changing voltage, which is then digitized and processed by the
microcontroller. The robot uses proportional integral/derivative (PID)
to control its speed and steering. Learn more.
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 RoboMagellan is a robotics
competition emphasizing autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance
over varied, outdoor terrain. At the start of the competition, a set
of GPS waypoints are programmed into the robot, and it must find its
way from start to finish without human intervention. Because of the
irregularity of the terrain, the robot must use a combination of its
sensory capabilities including GPS, machine vision, optical sensors,
and ultrasound sensors to navigate around the obstacles. The number
and complexity of the subsystems makes power and integration two of
the largest challenges. The variety of sensor data being fed into the
robot requires the use of sophisticated control techniques including
fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence. Learn
more.
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The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is
the world's largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to
advancing the unmanned systems community. AUVSI, with members from
government organizations, industry and academia, is committed to
fostering, developing, and promoting unmanned systems and related
technologies. The complete mission objectives are for an unmanned,
radio controllable aircraft to be launched and transition or continue
to autonomous flight, navigate a specified course, and use onboard
payload sensors to locate and assess a series of manmade objects in a
search area prior to returning to the launch point for landing. Learn more.
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Past Projects
These projects are no longer active, but their members' hard work
lives on!
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 Smart Parking is an aid to
transportation problems. By programming and interfacing PIC
microcontrollers to piezoelectric and 900MHz RF radios, the Smart
Parking Team’s goal is to design a system to monitor and display the
number of available parking spaces in the parking structure. Learn more.
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 Computers
to San Diego Kids, Inc. is a non-profit organization created with the
goal of assisting qualified children and their families to obtain
computers and related products in order to help them with their
education. Team members refurbish donated computers and get them ready
for donation to San Diego's youth. Learn more.
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