Non-deterministic, minimalist robots [WeaselBot]

Mentors: Alli Nilles and Steven LaValle

Extended Abstract, Poster, Code

For my undergraduate thesis I worked on a “weasel bot” which was a simple, random, bouncing robot. I was interested in designing a mechanical structure that goes around the weasel bot that allows it to connect with other weasel bots. The ultimate goal in this project was to study what tasks can be accomplished through minimal sensing including pushing an object and having the robots join together in a configuration.

This project resulted in a publication at MRS 2018 and also allowed me to open source a python package that was more efficient in memory and sometimes in time than SciPy at solving a system of equations when the equations were represented through a sparse Kronecker product.