Simons :: Undergraduate Projects

Project Code	Project Description	Student
AJHS-UG-5	Autonomous Satellite Recovery in the Ecliptic This is the first of two projects offered in the area of spacecraft navigation, autonomous spacecraft and swarm robots. Spacecraft navigation is currently controlled from Earth stations, which send signals into deep space to alter the course or mission profile of the craft. However, this is only really effective over short ranges, because of the relativistic delay when transmitting over interplanetary distances. In the future, spacecraft should be able to make their own autonomous decisions about navigation and should be able to determine and evaluate their own goals. The first scenario is the "Little Lost Robot" example, in which it is assumed that an autonomous spacecraft is placed in an arbitrary orbit somewhere in the Solar System and has to work out where it is and then navigate to some predetermined goal location, such as enter orbit around a particular planet. In this scenario, you have to model how the spacecraft will determine its orientation and location in the plane of the ecliptic, and then determine whether it has sufficient delta-v to reach its objective. This project will call upon Space Physics to model the Solar System and the trajectory of the spacecraft, and will develop a rotation- and scaling-neutral star-matching algorithm to identify where in the plane of the ecliptic the spacecraft is.	Mr Joseph Green
AJHS-UG-6	Autonomous Spacecraft and Swarm Robots This is the second of two projects offered in the area of spacecraft navigation, autonomous spacecraft and swarm robots. Spacecraft navigation is currently controlled from Earth stations, which send signals into deep space to alter the course or mission profile of the craft. However, this is only really effective over short ranges, because of the relativistic delay when transmitting over interplanetary distances. In the future, spacecraft should be able to make their own autonomous decisions about navigation and should be able to determine and evaluate their own goals. The second scenario is the "Swarm Robot" example, where a group of robot satellites are released near a planet to engage in some kind of cooperative survey activity. The individual members of the swarm will share out different responsibilities, such as prospecting or reporting back, via a chain of robots, to the Earth station. In this scenario, you imagine that individual robots may become damaged to the extent that they cannot fulfil all their allocated tasks; and then you model how the remaining robots in the swarm reschedule their activity to complete the mission. This project will require developing a multi-agent model of the swarm, in a suitable multi-agent simulation environment. It should focus either on the Mars exploration scenario, or the asteroid belt mining scenario. This project may call upon (Timed) Process Calculi to model the concurrent execution behaviour of the robots in the swarm.	Ms Rebecca Campbell
AJHS-UG-7	Abalone Board-Game Player This project aims to develop a program to play the the strategy game Abalone, which is played on a hexagonal board. The two sides take it in turns to move pieces in any of the six possible directions, with the objective of eventually ejecting six of the opponent's pieces off the board. On each turn, one to three connected pieces may be moved. A broadside move may only be made, provided that there is space in which to move. An inline move may also be made, even if it is blocked by the opponent's pieces, so long as there are fewer of these opposing the moving pieces. Thus, three pieces may displace two; and two may displace one. A piece on the edge of the board may be ejected by such a move. It is recognised that a cluster of pieces, three wide in every direction, in the centre of the board is a very strong, defensible position; whereas pieces near the edge of the board are vulnerable. The project will create a computer representation of the hexagonal grid, with a suitable coordinate system. It will investigate game theory and algorithmic notions of game playing, such as the mini-max algorithm for optimising zero-sum games. It will attempt to characterise what constitutes strong, or weak, playing positions on the board, such that a game search engine could seek to find the stronger positions for the autonomous player. The game playing engine should be built in software capable of rendering the playing field, for example, in Java and using the Swing toolkit. Suitable care should be paid to how the user should select the pieces to move, using a minimum of mouse clicks or object selections, and dragging the pieces to the new location.The notion is eventually that a human player could challenge the machine player, to see who wins the game.	Mr Adam Houghton

Project Code

Project Description

Student

AJHS-UG-5

Autonomous Satellite Recovery in the Ecliptic

This is the first of two projects offered in the area of spacecraft navigation, autonomous spacecraft and swarm robots. Spacecraft navigation is currently controlled from Earth stations, which send signals into deep space to alter the course or mission profile of the craft. However, this is only really effective over short ranges, because of the relativistic delay when transmitting over interplanetary distances. In the future, spacecraft should be able to make their own autonomous decisions about navigation and should be able to determine and evaluate their own goals.

The first scenario is the "Little Lost Robot" example, in which it is assumed that an autonomous spacecraft is placed in an arbitrary orbit somewhere in the Solar System and has to work out where it is and then navigate to some predetermined goal location, such as enter orbit around a particular planet. In this scenario, you have to model how the spacecraft will determine its orientation and location in the plane of the ecliptic, and then determine whether it has sufficient delta-v to reach its objective. This project will call upon Space Physics to model the Solar System and the trajectory of the spacecraft, and will develop a rotation- and scaling-neutral star-matching algorithm to identify where in the plane of the ecliptic the spacecraft is.

Mr Joseph Green

AJHS-UG-6

Autonomous Spacecraft and Swarm Robots

This is the second of two projects offered in the area of spacecraft navigation, autonomous spacecraft and swarm robots. Spacecraft navigation is currently controlled from Earth stations, which send signals into deep space to alter the course or mission profile of the craft. However, this is only really effective over short ranges, because of the relativistic delay when transmitting over interplanetary distances. In the future, spacecraft should be able to make their own autonomous decisions about navigation and should be able to determine and evaluate their own goals.

The second scenario is the "Swarm Robot" example, where a group of robot satellites are released near a planet to engage in some kind of cooperative survey activity. The individual members of the swarm will share out different responsibilities, such as prospecting or reporting back, via a chain of robots, to the Earth station. In this scenario, you imagine that individual robots may become damaged to the extent that they cannot fulfil all their allocated tasks; and then you model how the remaining robots in the swarm reschedule their activity to complete the mission. This project will require developing a multi-agent model of the swarm, in a suitable multi-agent simulation environment. It should focus either on the Mars exploration scenario, or the asteroid belt mining scenario. This project may call upon (Timed) Process Calculi to model the concurrent execution behaviour of the robots in the swarm.

Ms Rebecca Campbell

AJHS-UG-7

Abalone Board-Game Player

This project aims to develop a program to play the the strategy game Abalone, which is played on a hexagonal board. The two sides take it in turns to move pieces in any of the six possible directions, with the objective of eventually ejecting six of the opponent's pieces off the board. On each turn, one to three connected pieces may be moved. A broadside move may only be made, provided that there is space in which to move. An inline move may also be made, even if it is blocked by the opponent's pieces, so long as there are fewer of these opposing the moving pieces. Thus, three pieces may displace two; and two may displace one. A piece on the edge of the board may be ejected by such a move. It is recognised that a cluster of pieces, three wide in every direction, in the centre of the board is a very strong, defensible position; whereas pieces near the edge of the board are vulnerable.

The project will create a computer representation of the hexagonal grid, with a suitable coordinate system. It will investigate game theory and algorithmic notions of game playing, such as the mini-max algorithm for optimising zero-sum games. It will attempt to characterise what constitutes strong, or weak, playing positions on the board, such that a game search engine could seek to find the stronger positions for the autonomous player. The game playing engine should be built in software capable of rendering the playing field, for example, in Java and using the Swing toolkit. Suitable care should be paid to how the user should select the pieces to move, using a minimum of mouse clicks or object selections, and dragging the pieces to the new location.The notion is eventually that a human player could challenge the machine player, to see who wins the game.

Mr Adam Houghton