Lotus - An Undergraduate Capstone Design Project Framework for Environmental Monitoring Applications

A prototype of a semi-autonomous robotic system, called Lotus, has been developed to collect field sensor data in the Salton Sea region of the Imperial Valley. The system is constructed using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components and is powered by an 8-bit MCU and a 64-bit CPU. Power management techniques, including energy harvesting and charge control, as well as adaptive load control, have been adopted. A long-range wireless communication radio with a custom-designed antenna is also included. In order to reduce data transmission, image recognition utilizing TensorFlow's machine learning algorithm is employed. This project serves as a capstone project essential for ABET accreditation and establishes a framework for a continuous improvement process aimed at promoting awareness and proposing solutions to address a local environmental problem.