EchoMap

Imagine a car mapping its surroundings in real-time, creating a 2D-map. From cars to drones, our technology aims to map hard to reach areas, improving navigation and spatial awareness.

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Inspiration

Our team was inspired by autonomous vehicles as well as robot vacuums that map spaces using ultrasound and infrared sensors.

What It Does

Our device is a ultrasound and infrared powered Arduino system that makes a 2D map of the surrounding area as the RC car moves. It also has a feature that sounds a noise when its close to a wall to assist in preventing collisions.

How We Built

The project is comprised of a Arduino uno, infrared sensor, ultrasonic sensor, accelerometer. We then send the data from the Arduino into serial so that the pyserial can read it and create a 2-D map of the distance that it scanned. The final product it self was constructed with cardboard and finally assembled onto the RC car for final testing.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was since a lot of our hardware broke during the competition we had to scrap a lot of data such as the tilt to find the angle the car is facing and acceleration to find the current position of the car. Our IR sensor also broke so we couldn't take better distance data, and our Servo motor also overheated causing it to be very inconsistent. Due to all these factors we settled on our final product that only finds distance the wall is from the wall at each angle and if the wall where the sensor is facing is close to the sensor it will beep.

Accomplishments

We are really proud of overcoming the weight constraint on the servo motor as we decided to trim the surrounding area and it fixes our problem enough for us to run the servo motor for a few minutes. We are also proud we finished the project with all the challenges we ran into

What We Learned

Throughout the project, we became much more knowledgeable of operating the Arduino itself alongside the infrared and ultrasonics sensors. It was truly fascinating researching the pin diagrams and understanding how each of these parts come together to form our final product.

What's Next

In regards of what's next for EchoMap, we plan to obtain better sensors to get more refined data and 3D print parts so that it is more rigid. Furthermore, we plan to use this technology on drones and even real vehicles as a way to prevent crashes in a similar sense to Tesla's automatic braking system. For medical use we could also add another program to convert the 2d map onto a physical map that blind people can use to feel where they are in relation to things in the room.

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