Research support Laboratory technician

The functions performed within the laboratory technician position are divided into two parts: on the one hand, those related to a commercialization project of a domestic social robot in conjunction with an external company; and on the other hand, those related to the Hardware technician position within the Laboratory. The latter includes the supervision of BSs/MSs Hardware related, carried out in the Laboratory and act as guidance of scholarship engineers of the Master in Robotics.

 

Within the first one, it includes the work done in the thesis of the Master’s degree in Robotics, which included the research and implementation of sufficient electronics to perform the operations of the previous robots at a low cost. This was later included in the design of the commercial robot.

 

Following an order, this process has covered the hardware part:

  • Structural and mechanical design with SolidWorks and manufacturing with FDM printers.
  • Thermal study with SolidWorks.
  • Aesthetic design by means of meshes and surfaces with Autodesk Inventor.
  • CPU research study
  • Robot sensors (capacitive, temperature, presence, joint position feedback).
  • Study of actuators (modeling servomotors, audio, eye screens, addressable LEDs).
  • Use of microcontrollers or microprocessors for low level control (ATMEGA family, Pololu servo motor controller boards and Raspberry Pi) using C++ language, Python and ROS (Robot Operating System) on Linux based OS.
  • General power and consumption study.
  • Electronics connection on test board, then on track board and finally design, manufacturing and testing of PCB designed in Eagle and Altium Designer taking into consideration requirements for CE certification.
  • Complete 3D modeling of the robot, including Altium generated model.

 

And in the Software part:

  • Communication interface with the microcontrollers (Firmware).
  • Use of configuration YAML scripts for component initialization.
  • Bash scripts and shell commands.
  • Adaptation of power button actions and management of internal interruptions such as the computer’s audio jack.

 

 

Additionally, within the laboratory I have carried out the following projects:

  • Design of luminous cube with wireless charging and WiFi communication using Altium Designer with multiplate project, ESP32 microcontroller and sensors, including an IMU.
  • Vehicle geolocation project using LoRa radio frequency technology and GPS modules.
  • Electronic design of a smart thermostat using ESP8266, notification display, integration of a mobile messaging Bot and its mechanical design.
  • Programming of ATTINY microcontrollers in low-power projects, maintenance of 3D printers and supervision of the creation of a mobile base.
  • Creation of code documentation with Doxygen, project documentation with LaTeX, use of version control such as GitLab and GitHub and continuous integration testing.