An autonomous campus tour guide robot as a platform for collaborative engineering design

Abstract

The University of South Alabama School of Computer and Information Sciences and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are participating in a collaborative effort, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), to design and build an autonomous robotic campus tour guide. The life-size tour guide robot, called JagBot after the University of South Alabama jaguar mascot, is capable of verbal and physical interaction with prospective students and visitors. The robot can answer questions, describe campus landmarks, and can autonomously navigate from location to location on campus using a variety of on-board sensors. The NSF funding for JagBot was leveraged with University undergraduate research funding to provide a wide variety of opportunities for student research. During a two-year period, interdisciplinary research involving the School of Computer and Information Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering resulted in opportunities for undergraduate research, senior capstone design projects, graduate research, three master's theses and invaluable community exposure for STEM education. In addition to research opportunities, the work with JagBot resulted in the development of a 400-level senior elective engineering class in LabView and provided justification for University funding of a laboratory based on National Instruments data acquisition systems. This paper describes the design process and the contribution of the students to the final JagBot design. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.