.

Developers:
Abdulla Hil Kafi
Raihana Shams Islam Antara
Maisun Ibn Monowar
Supervisor:
Dr. Md. Khalilur Rhaman

Motivation:
Remote sensing is directly dependent of satellite images as updated data are critical for geological and meteorological data. Since Bangladesh has no satellite of its own, GIS researchers are heavily defendant upon buying or acquiring permission to use image captured by some other satellite. An immediate alternative is to use a UAV to map a target area. However, flying a UAV requires skills that requires practice. Therefore, an autonomous platform is required which can fly and capture images on its own upon receiving target coordinates.

Features:
“Porjobekkhok” is a modular designed quadcopter which serves as an alternate platform for remote sensing. Equipped with open source hardware and software, it promises Geological researchers to cut down time and cost associated with their land survey. Its modular design allows geological researchers to add their own software for faster and more efficient processing. In favorable condition, It is sufficiently programmed to fly without any pilot. Modular design of “Porjobekkhok” allows the user to rebuild entire quadcopter using locally available parts and tools, which makes any repairs and rebuild super easy.

Hardware:
While designing “Porjobekkhok”, our UAV model, special emphasis were given on using locally available parts. For on board computing, we used ArduPilot, an open source robust flight computer giving us the maximum flexibility. The body is made for PVC plastic. PVC pipes enabled us to create something light and cheap for a quadcopter without exceeding our budget.

Software:
Creating a reliable core software is as essential as building a good quadcopter frame. For flight control and navigation we used “Mission Planner”, which is open source and compatible with ArduPilot. Our main challenge was to create a software which could successfully acquire and process images. We could successfully create three demo applications.

Crop health estimation:
Based on the color of crop we can estimate the condition of crop on field.

Super Resolution Image:
We used CCD camera to capture our images. In order to over the limitation of small resolution camera, we wrote a software to create super resolution image from video.

River Line Detection:
Bangladesh is a riverine country. To forecast river bed corrosion we capture and process of a target site at a certain interval. This would enable us to predict river bed corrosion with some degree of confidence.

Labview interface:
In order to make our project more usable, we created a LabView interface to run image processing. This enables third party developers to add their own algorithms.

Telemetry:
We can also acquire flight telemetry data in real time. This enables us not to look at the images only, but also exact attitude of the camera while the image is being captured.

Contact Information:
Abdulla Hil Kafi - ahkafi29@gmail.com
Raihana Shams Islam Antara - antara.anto@gmail.com
Maisun Ibn Monowar - maisunmonwar@gmail.com

BRAC University had sent a robot named Chondrobot-2 to NASA for competing NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition on May 2012. “ChondroBot -2″ a robotics team from the School of Engineering and Computer Science of BRAC University received the Asia’s Best title in the recently held NASA`s third “Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition (LMC)” in USA. This year three (03) teams from Bangladesh and top 55 teams from around the world took part in this annual mining competition including Harvard University, Virginia Tech, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and McGill University etc. All three teams from Bangladesh successfully completed different stages of the competition and took part in the final mining stage. ChondroBot -2 team from Brac University was the only university from Bangladesh which was successful to collect samples by their lunar excavation device in mining stage and also discharge those in the designated place. The team also received best position in “Joe Kosmo Award of Excellence” segment which eventually helped ChondroBot -2 to secure 12th among all the teams around the world. Mobile Phone operator Robi Axiata Limited was the co-sponsor of Chondrobot lunar excavation device of this tour to NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA.

NASA had organized Second Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition on May 23-28, 2011. It was a university-level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). NASA directly benefited from the competition by encouraging the development of innovative lunar excavation concepts from universities, which may result in clever ideas, and solutions, which applied, to an actual lunar excavation device or payload. The challenge was to design remote controlled or autonomous excavators, or lunabots that have to collect and deposit lunar stimulant with some dimension and weight limitation. Initially 72 teams applied and around 48 teams from five countries, namely, the United States, Canada, India, Bangladesh and Columbia, participated for the 2011 competition. BRAC University team attended the competition for the first time from Bangladesh. The team members were Shiblee Imtiaz Hasan, Mohammad Jonayet Hossain, Kazi Mohammad Razin, Mahmudul Hasan Oyon and Md. Asifur Rahman, from the School of Engineering and Computer Science (SECS). Dr. Md. Khalilur Rahman, Dr. Mohammed Belal Hossain Bhuian and Dr. Md. Mosaddeque Rahman were the faculty advisors of this team. Eftakhar Karim Rahat, Imran Bin Jafar and Nirjhor Tahmidur Rouf were the volunteer participant of this project. BRAC University team named their robot as “BRACU_CHONDROBOT” which became a brand name with in a very short time. They were in NASA without having any major problems. Their CHONDROBOT worked almost perfectly, even after traveling the half of the world. There were minor problems with some sensors but they could fix them in time. After having weight, dimension and communication inspection of course they got the opportunity to participate in final session. However, the power of motor was not enough for Lunar regolith simulate. In Bangladesh, they experimented in normal dust surface but the surface they found in lunarena was totally different. Anyway, they could grab a huge attention of NASA and their Medias because of their simple and cleaver design. Other Universities were surprised to know that they don’t have any mechanical student and carried the whole robot as their luggage. After the competition, they had a good realization that the design and implementation was good enough for that event. So, if they can use this experience for future implementation, they will be able to get reasonable success. McGill, Harvard University could not even participate in final session; most of the universities attended for the first time in this year, could not get good result (except the champion team). 48 teams got invitation to go to NASA, 25 teams got opportunity to participate in final session and 13 teams only could collect reasonable lunar regolith. The ChondroBot team is wishing to attend again in the next year. So yes, ChondroBot does not end its journey here. For BRAC University, It was the end of the beginning in robotic world.