Autonomous Front Loader

Steve Koopman and Jerred Peterson 

 

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Project Abstract

The basic goal of this project was to implement a low cost autonomous vehicle to do a specific task, which in this case was to load a truck with material from a bin.  This project could be used as an initial point in an entire chain of autonomous vehicles, which could be used to control the operations of a gravel yard, or construction site.  Also, this will hopefully spark interest into similar project ideas, which would provide opportunities for future Bradley University students to work with relatively inexpensive autonomous robots.

It is our hope that one of the future senior projects will take over where this project left off, and continue to modify and enhance the vehicle until it would essentially work on a full scale front loader.  The largest step towards that end would be to add one or two camera’s to the vehicle, and process the images in near-real time to provide instructions to the platform on how it should achieve its goal.  With this upgrade, the front loader could probably do about everything a full sized front loader could do, as long as it had proper programming.

 

Special Thanks

We would like to thank for their help on this project:

Dr. Donald Schertz- For being our adviser for this project

Nick Schmitt- For all his help with the construction of the loader and arena

All the Bradley University EE department faculty- for the help they gave throughout the project