ROBOTICS TRACK / LEVEL 06 ROADMAP
Coordinate high-level vision and low-level robot control through explicit messages, independent safety checks, timeouts, and recoverable failure.
This final-level plan depends on approved robot-control and computer-vision baselines. Messaging, power, mounting, command expiry, independent local safety, restart, latency, and emergency-stop behavior must all pass together before the level can be frozen. Do not purchase Level 6 hardware from this page.
Students divide responsibilities between processors, design a small communication protocol, calibrate camera evidence into steering, preserve local obstacle safety, diagnose latency, and prove what happens when data becomes uncertain, malformed, stale, or missing.
NO_TARGET, UNSURE, invalid data, and subsystem failure.PROVISIONAL HARDWARE
The pathway is designed to combine the already proven low-level robot controller, motors and sensors with the already proven camera, computer, and inspectable vision pipeline.
The current candidate uses an explicit message link between the vision processor and robot controller. Exact cable, mounting, power, protocol, and recovery details remain provisional until the physical chain passes.
Planning estimate: $45–$100 incremental beyond reused Level 3–5 hardware. The larger upstream platforms are not included in that incremental band.
PLANNED LEARNING ARC
Decide what vision may request and what the robot must always control locally.
Create explicit, inspectable communication instead of hidden coupling.
Prove that stale or missing messages cannot keep the robot moving.
Measure how image position relates to the robot’s physical steering direction.
Translate a validated target position into bounded steering requests.
Keep local obstacle evidence authoritative even when vision requests movement.
Validate commands and prevent one repeated marker from advancing a mission repeatedly.
Represent a mission whose next action depends on checked evidence.
Handle expected failures without endless searching or unsafe movement.
Align evidence across processors and locate communication or timing faults.
Assemble vision, protocol, low-level control, independent safety, and recovery.
Run comparable missions, improve one decision, and defend the final safety boundaries.
PATHWAY CAPSTONE
Planned choices include destination-marker delivery, colored-target following, a station-reading warehouse robot, a high-visibility rescue rover, or an equivalent approved invention.
Students must defend processor responsibilities, calibration, uncertainty handling, stale and invalid command stops, the independent distance override, one bounded recovery, timestamped diagnosis, three comparable trials, and a reachable physical emergency stop.