Orchard Robot: My Senior Human-Computer Interaction Design Project

So I think I mentioned something about my senior project a while ago in my "list of things to blog about." And since I have some fun pictures from that, might as well give you an overview.

So I'm double-majoring in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction. I explain the second as a combination of design, user testing, technology, and psychology. "Human factors" and "user-centered design" are also thrown around in describing it.


There are four groups with four to five people each, and each has a client we are serving. Our client is the Comprehensive Automation of Specialty Crops group within the Robotics Department at CMU. There is this vehicle thing that can drive down the rows of trees in an orchard by itself. So they are putting a lift for people on the back of it (so the people don't have to drive), and we are in charge of creating controls to modify the settings.


In the middle of March, we had a great day out at Soergel's Orchards, testing the vehicle and controls with the "Wizard of Oz" method (meaning that we just pretend that the controls are changing the settings of the vehicle when actually it was just our advisor steering.)


After a few times back and forth down the line, and a few times using different controls, we got the data we wanted, and began our next iteration. Right now, we are in the final week of a final design (that is actually going to control the vehicle!) There are a few technical snags, but I'm feeling pretty confident.