Introduction
Hi! We are Durham Robotics, a new society at Durham University. It was first conceptualised by our president, Lizete Viljoen, when she approached a Computer Science professor after a lecture to ask about a Robotics society at Durham. The professor replied that one didn’t exist yet, and suggested she create one. That is how our society came to life. Our aim is to promote and learn more about the field of robotics, and create projects that could ultimately be used in competitions.
Impact of Funding
Our society quickly garnered lots of interest from students across all subjects – Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, and others. We discovered a genuine interest and excitement among our peers in designing and building robots from scratch. We held numerous planning sessions and built simple robots using equipment donated by the department – however, we started to feel limited in the scope of our projects due to a lack of resources.
This is where the RS fund really helped us out. We were awarded with £300 worth of products which allowed our teams to order components tailored to their unique projects and ideas. We have now started building more creative projects – see what two of our teams have said about their plans and progress below.
Current projects
Team Zero Day: “Our project goal is to eventually develop an autonomous shopping cart to help the elderly and people with other disabilities to shop easier and better. The shopping cart will be able to follow the shopper at a small distance and always be at hand to take their items. It'll be interfaced by custom software (made by us eventually) so that it knows exactly where it is in the supermarket and where other shopping carts are to avoid collisions. It'll also have a local sensor array, consisting of a Lidar, for environment scanning, an IMU for positioning and a camera for object and collision detection. The local sensor array will all be brought together into implementing a SLAM algorithm running locally on the robot (hence a Jetson Nano), to enable autonomous manoeuvrability, detection, and an awareness of its surroundings, ensuring a safe and easy experience for shoppers. We are still in the early stages, figuring out our software and testing out the RS components, with lots more progress to be made over the coming weeks”.
Team Prototype: “We are currently developing a remote-controlled robot that can autonomously navigate toward specific objects within its field of view. The primary control method will be voice commands via our web-based dashboard, with manual movement controls also available. Our goal is to enable users to simply instruct the robot to move to an object—such as a door—and have it navigate there independently.
At this stage, we have an initial dashboard with the camera connected, utilizing rerun through the web for data visualization alongside our own control interface. This setup allows us to integrate multiple data sources, including depth perception, camera feed, target object tracking, and command logs in an intuitive visualisation and timeline. The dashboard also features buttons for initiating a microphone stream and sending manual movement commands via a D-pad interface, though these functionalities are still in development. Hosting the dashboard on the web ensures seamless remote control from anywhere.
Our next steps involve integrating the remaining hardware into the dashboard, including the LiDAR sensor and Arduino-based movement controller. Once connected, we will work on the command processing pipeline: Voice Recognition → Natural Language Processing (NLP) → Command Parsing. If the command references an object, we will then use AI object detection to identify it in images, and then map it to the depth data to use for pathfinding
Regarding the RS components, we have successfully mounted the LiDAR sensor and are working on visualizing its data within our dashboard. We have also installed the USB drive on the robot, providing larger, faster, and more reliable storage for our application—an improvement over the onboard microSD card.
Being part of the Durham Robotics has been an amazing experience, fostering motivation and teamwork. It has given us the opportunity to explore robotics in ways we might not have otherwise, and we look forward to continuing to be a part of it”.
Challenges and Solutions
Working with limited resources has been a challenge for our society from the beginning. However, we were lucky to create a community of committed students who consistently came to planning sessions. Teams were given a limited amount of the RS funding to choose products for, and through careful planning designed projects that could be implemented within the budget. Thanks to good planning and collaboration, they have been able to start exciting projects, and we are looking forward to seeing what we can create.
Results and Impact
The fund has allowed our society to keep going and rise to a new level. The products that we were able to receive have allowed us to start building robots, and will be reused for the years to come by future generations of students. Most importantly, we have built a friendly, open, and inclusive community of people interested in robotics, and we are confident that the society will continue to grow and attract more interest in the future!
Conclusion
We are grateful for the products we received and are now using to meet the aims of our new society. I would encourage anyone thinking of starting a new project or society to give it a shot! In our case, what started as a simple question and idea by a student has now become a truly thriving and exciting society, and we are looking forward to all of the projects we will be able to create!
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