Intelligent spider robot for detecting anti-personnel metallic landmines in uneven terrain

Bachelor's Thesis and Professional Degree Thesis - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP)

November 27^th, 2020 - Lima, Peru

For my bachelor and professional degree thesis, I designed a spider robot that can move through irregular terrain carrying a landmine sensor. The design included the mechanical structure, the electronics, and the control of the robot. I proposed an innovative algorithm for controlling the joints to make the robot learn to walk, using genetic algorithms and ensemble learning.

The proposed algorithm allows training an intelligent agent to maximize a reward metric without applying reinforcement learning techniques, which are usually the way to solve this type of problem.

To test the designed gait learning algorithm, I used a scaled prototype maintaining the same geometry and DOF of the robot designed for moving the landmine sensor. For my thesis, I improved the spider robot I made in 2018.

I obtained my Bachelor’s degree on September, 2019. After that, my thesis was improved and then presented to obtain my Professional Degree of Mechatronics Engineer on November, 2020.

Scaled spider robot built to test the proposed gait-learning algorithm — **First image:** Scaled robot built to test the algorithm I proposed. **Second image:** Me, very happy at the poster presentation of my bachelor's thesis.

Daniel Saromo at his bachelor's-thesis poster presentation — **First image:** Scaled robot built to test the algorithm I proposed. **Second image:** Me, very happy at the poster presentation of my bachelor's thesis.

My thesis received the following national and international awards:

Best bachelor’s thesis and poster presentation at the PUCP Mechatronics Workshop of the semester 2019-1.
Innovation Recognition Award at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE) 2019, which was celebrated in Utah, USA.
Extraordinary Support Funding for Undergraduate Research Thesis.
Degree thesis unanimously awarded by the tribunal with the qualification of outstanding.

You can watch here the defense of my professional degree thesis.

Professional degree thesis defense video

Publication resources

Thesis document (English abstract available) Video of Professional Degree Thesis defense (in Spanish) Video of Bachelor Thesis defense (in Spanish) Poster of Bachelor Thesis (in Spanish)