Automatic Vehicle Recharging System (AVRS) Major Qualifying Project (MQP)
2014-2015
The goal of this project is to recharge autonomous electric vehicles, thus automating one of the last steps preventing a level 5 autonomous vehicle from being completely independent from human assistance. For this project we are using an ABB industrial
robotic arm with a custom end effector. Our tooling has force sensing and a tool changer, allowing for switching between a pneumatic flap opener and two charging port standards. To help us achieve this goal we implemented custom computer
vision and point cloud processing software. System integration was done using ROS-Industrial. Ultimately, while we were able to plug in our test vehicle using the ABB arm, there were issues with latency as well as with the reliability
of the real time path planning features of ROS-Industrial.