This page lists proposed open source hardware and/software projects to be conducted to extend the open source ecosystem of LibreCube. Many of them involve hardware development, the costs of which can be covered by LibreCube. Further, many of those proposals may qualify as student projects or bachelor thesis, and some even as a Master thesis. The projects are listed in no particular order. If you have questions or like to work on a project, email to info@librecube.org.
01 Development and Training of Rover-Mounted Robotic Arm for Manipulation of Objects
We have a prototype of a robotic arm here. Eventually the arm shall be mounted on a rover, as shown here. The goal of this project is to design a board to host the control electronics and dedicated power supply for the arm. Further, it shall be equipped with at least two cameras (one fixed on rover and one at arm gripper) to allow recording and subsequently training of autonomous activities.
02 Integration of a PLUTO Language Based Automation System with Yamcs
We are using Yamcs as mission control system to control our robotics systems, such as satellite, rovers, and drones. Yamcs is typically controlled by human operator, but provides an API for interfacing. This project is to develop an adapter to use our PLUTO engine to interface with Yamcs.
03 LoRa Groundstation for Satellite Telemetry Collection
LoRa is a communications protocol for sending low bandwidth data over large distances. The goal of this project is to develop a low-cost ground station that is able to receive and decode LoRa data from flying satellites. For this, our LoRa decoder can be utilized. Further, the ground station shall be added to the TinyGS ground station network.
04 RobertaLab for Simulation and Control of Modular Rover System
The Open Roberta Lab is an open source web application for teenagers and students to learn about robotics and program rovers and robots in an engaging way. The goal of this project is to develop a plugin or extension to this software, in order to integrate the LibreCube rover platform into it. In particular, the commanding and monitoring of the rover shall be made possible through it.
05 Rover Payload for Measuring Environmental Health Hazards
Develop a prototype LibreCube board that hosts various sensors and instruments for characterization of environmental conditions in terms of eg. air quality, temperature, dust, CO2, and so on. This board may be used on rovers.
06 CubeSat Payload for Measuring of Orbital Radiation
Develop a prototype LibreCube board that can measure radiation, building upon this open source dosimeter.
07 Rover Module for Voice Interaction
The idea here is to be able to interact with the rover through verbal conversation, meaning to command the rover (say: “rover, drive forward”, “what is your battery voltage”), and the rover replying with acknowledgements and status updates (“ok, driving forward”, “the battery voltage is at 3.7”). For this, our text-to-speech and speech-to-text prototypes may be relevant. The processing can be done on a Raspberry Pi, and the speaker and microphone hardware is typically low-cost.
08 Rover Quadruped-Legged Motion Module
To be written…
09 Rover Gimbal Module for Directional Pointing Lasers
A gimbal module is useful for being able to point cameras, laser, lamps, or any other sensors to specific directions. The gimbal mechanics should be mountable on the rover, whereas the control board shall be placed inside the rover. Useful open source reference projects can be found here, here, and here.
10 Rover Camera Module for Object Detection, Classification, and Following
To be written…
11 LIDAR sensor for Rover Navigation
Develop a LibreCube board that provides a LIDAR system to be used for rovers. Build upon this open source LIDAR project.
12 CubeSat Attitude Control System based on Open Source Technologies
To be written…
13 Gamepad Style Controller for Rover Maneuvering
This is a small but cool project with the goal to create a NES style gamepad (see this example) and equip it with a WiFi-able microcontroller (eg. Raspi Pico). It shall send out CCSDS Packets over UDP to the rover for command it (eg. drive forward, stop, etc.).
14 Blockly PLUTO Procedure Editor
We developed a blockly-based application to support the creation of PLUTO procedures using block programming. A demo of the application can be found here. PLUTO is predominantly used in European space missions. This application is targeted for students and engineers of space mission automation. It provides them an easy-to-use tool to create valid PLUTO procedures. The task here is to improve the editor in a number of ways. Most importantly, the activity and value references, which are currently defined as free text in the blocks input fields, should be instead come from a database and be presented as pull-down menu. The database shall in the XTCE format. Writing an XTCE encoder/decoder will be essential for this task.
15 CubeSat Advanced Power System
To be written…
16 Python Implementation of CCSDS USLP Protocol
The CCSDS USLP protocol is a relative new standard for spacecraft communications. It unifies the typically used CCSDS TC and TM protocols into a single format. Goal of this project is to implement this protocol in Python and demonstrate its working by interfacing it with Yamcs.
17 Beaglebone as Onboard Computer
To be written…
18 Tailor Yamcs for SpaceCAN Testing
To be written…
19 Python Implementation of CCSDS Security Protocol
To be written…