Research of Professor James M. Conrad

Embedded Systems and Autonomous Robotics Lab

The Embedded Systems and Autonomous Vehicle Lab has a long history of university/industry collaboration with companies like Frontline Test Equipment, iRobot, Zapata Engineering, Emerson, Renesas, and National Instruments. Graduated students currently work in embedded systems jobs at Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Intel, General Dynamics, Dematic, Seagate, and The Mathworks. The lab director, Professor James Conrad, has over 25 years of experience in the embedded systems field in academia and at IBM, Ericsson/Sony Ericsson, and several start-ups.

Areas of Expertise:

Microcontroller/microprocessor-based systems design (TI, Atmel, Renesas, Microchip, Cypress, Xilinx, others)
Embedded systems software development and testing
Sensor development and use, including wireless sensor networks
Autonomous robotics – design, assembly, sensing, actuation, control, and path planning

Resources:

500 square-feet of indoor lab space, 500 square-feet of garage lab space, two Faraday cages
Computing systems and software compilers
Microcontroller/microprocessor development boards
Sensing, actuation and wireless devices
Prototyping machines and tools (board etching/milling machine, commercial soldering stations, drill press, jigsaw, 3-D microscope)
Mobile robotics platforms (commercial: National Instruments DaNI robots, GEARS vehicles, iRobot Roomba and Creates, drones/quadrotors; custom: pipe-crawler, tele-presence, wheeled)
Autonomous All-Terrain Vehicle (Honda FourTrax ATV)

Click here to see a single page flier of the capabilities of the Conrad Research lab

Research Projects under Dr. Conrad

If you are interested in working with me, please read the following "Frequently Asked Questions". (Under Construction). Of note: I WILL NOT select students for any of this work without seeing their skills in my Embedded Systems class. If you are interested, you must be a currently enrolled UNC Charlotte Student who has completed at least one semester of class work. NOTE: As of fall 2015, Dr. Conrad will no longer accept MS Project students.

When you write reports, try to write everything using IEEE standards. For final reports for classes, use the IEEE two column word file (Search the ieee.org website for the latest version.)

MS Thesis and PhD Research Topics

Inexpensive Autonomous Robotic Vehicle - the "Zapatabot":
- Control of motors and other actuators
- GPS dead reckoning - continuation of work by Sid Ahuja
- Sonar/ultrasonic sensors
- Camera recognition of objects
- LIDAR recognition of objects
- Area obstacle discovery and mapping
- Path planning based on object maps - continuation of work of Sharayu Ghangrekar
"Recyclebot" - an interactive vehicle that will roam around the football stadium encouraging people to recycle and collect recyclables. (This project is only funded for materials, NOT RA work):
- SLAM
- User interaction
- Mechanical design, drive chain, and motion control
- Sorting and compacting
- Safety
Design, assembly, and test of flying robotic vehicles (possible future funding)
- Investigating autonomous flight and control
- Investigating swarm behaviors
- Breadcrumb trail for communications to the swarm
Wireless Localizations of Robots
- Using RSSI values to triangulate the location of a robot that has aan on-board radio
- Developing SLAM algorithms to record the characteristics of a robot's environment
Radiation-hardened bobotics
- Creating a tethered radiation-hardened flying vehicle for inspection inside nuclear power plants.
- Creating a tethered radiation-hardened vehicle for inspection of a canister of spent nuclear power plant fuel.
Wireless sensor network of valves (funded)
- Creating a sensor/radio/processor package that can be retrofitted to industrial valves
- Creating a wireless communication network to convey sensor data to a main controller
Wireless sensor networks of a lighting control unit (possible future funding)
- Creating a control unit (requires electronics background)
- Creating a wireless communication unit