Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
21 Campus Tour Guide by AI-Powered Autonomous System
 Bob Jin
Hao Ren
Weiang Wang
Yuntong Gu
 design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
design_document3.pdf
final_paper2.pdf
final_paper3.pdf
proposal1.pdf
 Simon Hu
This [link](https://accurate-ringer-067.notion.site/Campus-Tour-Guide-by-AI-Powered-Autonomous-System-f4d17e16378740e2948f5bef4afd7315?pvs=4) contains the html version of our project description.



# Team Members


* Hao Ren 3200110807 haor2
* Xuanbo Jin 3200110464 xuanboj2
* Weiang Wang 3200111302 weiangw2
* Yuntong Gu 3200110187 yuntong7



> 💡 Note: this doc provides an overview of the project “Campus Tour Guide by AI-Powered Autonomous System”. We start by re-iterating the problem. We then present our proposal and solution. We also draft an initial plan to help build `v0`solution.

# đź‘€ Problem

Anyone entering a place for the first time, like an university, can be quite challenging. Knowing where you are, how to get to your destination, how to optimize your routes, knowing factors that will influence your routes can be complicated. Having a real-time interactive system that guides people through this process is needed. It has been possible yet not able to scale because it’s not open-sourced, and its hardware isn’t standardized, and is expensive. The interaction isn’t versatile enough to adapt well under the ever-changing applications. A cheap and versatile solution is needed.

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# đź’­ Proposal

## Solution Overview

Our solution utilizes autonomous UAV to guide our clients, sensing them and the environment, such as obstacles and drone’s location with a sensor module, controlled by a control unit which orchestrate a series of tasks. Our solution is cheap, open-sourced, and versatile to meet the need of a generalized and sustainable long-term solution for our campus and many other applications.

## Solution Components

Our solution contains the following parts: a sensor subsystem, a control subsystem, a mobility subsystem, an inter-connect module.

### Sensor Subsystem

- Identify obstacles
- Identify the person to lead, exclude the other people
- GPS location

### Control Subsystem

- Deploy routes

### Mobility Subsystem

- A drone

### Inter-connect Module

- Inter-communication of control unit, peripheral sensors, and the drone
- Supply power to the sensor module and control unit.

## Criteria for Success

### Milestone 1

- drone can be controlled and moved independently
- GPS can sense the location
- Sensors can be powered

### Milestone 2

- Drone can be controlled by control subsystem
- control subsystem can receive signal from GPS module and sensors
- Routes can be output (not necessarily by moving the drones)

### Milestone 3

- Without obstacle, the system can follow the human
- Without obstacle, the system can fly from A to B and slow down / stop when human is too far away
- System can identify obstacle and plan a route to avoid them

### Milestone 4

- With obstacle, the system can fly from A to B and slow down / stop when human is too far away
- The starting point and ending destination pairs can be selected, e.x. 5 pairs of (A,B) is available.

### Milestone 5 [optional]

- An easy web app which sends signal to the system
- System can receive our instruction (vocal) and design a destination and lead the clients
- Support interactive chatting mode to help understand the surroundings

## Alternatives

*SKYCALL* currently provides a similar version of guiding tour for MIT. But that project isn’t open-sourced and the hardware are not cheap enough, or easy-to-maintain. Our solution is different in that we provide

- Cheap solution
- Open sourced solution (software + hardware), each component will be documented
- Unnecessary functionality will give its way to generality
- Versatile enough to support our campus (which is drastically different to MIT)

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# 🛫 Division of Work

- Xuanbo Jin: Xuanbo excels at software works. He should do the algorithm part of the design and also takes part in the firmware integration.
- Yuntong Gu: Yutong’s strong background at electrical engineering makes him a great candidate to test the validity of different hardware and connect them to the object. He should also helps the communication between each components.
- Weiang Wang: Enabled by weiang’s strong background in electrical engineering, he should actively helps the communication and interfaces between components.
- Hao Ren: Hao can do assorted works. Hao should actively do the software and firmware part of the work. Hao should explore the validity of possible direction and iterate the version of the projects properly. Hao should organize the roadmap and update it frequently, examining the priority of each part by experimentation and analysis.

BusPlan

Featured Project

# People

Scott Liu - sliu125

Connor Lake - crlake2

Aashish Kapur - askapur2

# Problem

Buses are scheduled inefficiently. Traditionally buses are scheduled in 10-30 minute intervals with no regard the the actual load of people at any given stop at a given time. This results in some buses being packed, and others empty.

# Solution Overview

Introducing the _BusPlan_: A network of smart detectors that actively survey the amount of people waiting at a bus stop to determine the ideal amount of buses at any given time and location.

To technically achieve this, the device will use a wifi chip to listen for probe requests from nearby wifi-devices (we assume to be closely correlated with the number of people). It will use a radio chip to mesh network with other nearby devices at other bus stops. For power the device will use a solar cell and Li-Ion battery.

With the existing mesh network, we also are considering hosting wifi at each deployed location. This might include media, advertisements, localized wifi (restricted to bus stops), weather forecasts, and much more.

# Solution Components

## Wifi Chip

- esp8266 to wake periodically and listen for wifi probe requests.

## Radio chip

- NRF24L01 chip to connect to nearby devices and send/receive data.

## Microcontroller

- Microcontroller (Atmel atmega328) to control the RF chip and the wifi chip. It also manages the caching and sending of data. After further research we may not need this microcontroller. We will attempt to use just the ens86606 chip and if we cannot successfully use the SPI interface, we will use the atmega as a middleman.

## Power Subsystem

- Solar panel that will convert solar power to electrical power

- Power regulator chip in charge of taking the power from the solar panel and charging a small battery with it

- Small Li-Ion battery to act as a buffer for shady moments and rainy days

## Software and Server

- Backend api to receive and store data in mongodb or mysql database

- Data visualization frontend

- Machine learning predictions (using LSTM model)

# Criteria for Success

- Successfully collect an accurate measurement of number of people at bus stops

- Use data to determine optimized bus deployment schedules.

- Use data to provide useful visualizations.

# Ethics and Safety

It is important to take into consideration the privacy aspect of users when collecting unique device tokens. We will make sure to follow the existing ethics guidelines established by IEEE and ACM.

There are several potential issues that might arise under very specific conditions: High temperature and harsh environment factors may make the Li-Ion batteries explode. Rainy or moist environments may lead to short-circuiting of the device.

We plan to address all these issues upon our project proposal.

# Competitors

https://www.accuware.com/products/locate-wifi-devices/

Accuware currently has a device that helps locate wifi devices. However our devices will be tailored for bus stops and the data will be formatted in a the most productive ways from the perspective of bus companies.