Browsing by Author "Reed, Brandon"

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    Omnidirectional robotic platform : the control of an omnidirectional robotic platform for use in robot soccer
    (2008) Levesque, Sally-Ann; McPhillips, Graeme; Marais, Stephen; Reed, Brandon
    The University of Cape Town competes in a national robot soccer competition. Teams of five small robots compete in the game of soccer without any human intervention. The robots are controlled by the artificial intelligence on a host computer connected to an overhead imaging system. The host computer controls the robots by sending them instructions via wireless communications. The robot soccer platform calls for the integration of electronic, mechanical and computer technologies and provides an exciting area for research. UCT first competed in the robot soccer competition in 2003, using differential drive robots designed by Graeme McPhillips. Research has shown that in the international robot soccer competition, teams are replacing their differential drive robots with omnidirectional robots – robots which can move in any direction without first changing their orientation to face the direction of motion. These robots have proved to be highly manoeuvrable and the winning teams in the small robot league are consistently those that use omnidirectional robots. In 2004, Craig Inman-Bamber designed and implemented UCT’s first omnidirectional robot platform. It is this platform that this dissertation is concerned with controlling. Electronic components were designed and implemented and software code written to control the robot in an omnidirectional manner.
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    Rapid assessment using automated marking
    (2008) Ulaya, Chibila Francis; Reed, Brandon
    Automated marking is heavily dependent on image acquisition and processing routines. Therefore ways of formatting examination and test papers were sought which allow for automated marking. Current marking machines utilise scanners to digitize answer scripts for marking purposes. These are more often than not, quite expensive. In investigating affordable ways of digitising answer scripts, the imaging device of choice was found to be a web camera. This was so because web cameras are readily available and are more affordable than scanners. This allowed the building of a prototype marking machine which was tested and performed as expected.