Contact

Hi. I am Madelaine Brower.

This year I am senior at James Madison University. I am currently studying computer science and mathematics with a concentration in robotics. In the future, I hope to go on to get my doctorate and then work to improve prothestics. Afterwards I have started to refine the classes that I am taking that will relate to the field of rehabilitative robotics. While I continue to develop this website please feel free to email me if you have any questions or want to talk.

Research Interests

My research interests are brain-machine interfaces and areas within the intersection of biomechatronics and intelligent systems. My interests are driven by a desire to make a difference in the world and in people’s lives combined with working in the field of computer science and robotics. Below I have listed some articles of some of the incredible things that we can accomplish as people and a field that I hope I can add to.

Projects

I am currently working on creating an autonomous golfcart to serve as a taxi system in a retirement community. This past fall I was in a class revolving around the project. Now I am part of a research group that is continuing to work on the project.

In spring 2018 an autonomous vehicles class was taught at JMU XLabs. The purpose of this course was to take a normal golfcart and transform it so that it is able to drive around on its own. This project gained a lot of attention and more importantly attention of one of the retirement communities in the local area. The spring course was very successful and at the end the golfcart was able to drive around the parking lot at JMU XLabs by itself. Here is a video of the final product! The attention from the retirement community birthed an idea of creating an autonomous taxi system for a retirement community.

With this newfound direction of the project, a group was brought together in May 2019. Unfortunately, another class had been taught and the previous work that had been done was rolled back. It was then my responsibility to make the cart drive autonmously once again. By the end of the summer we had a new golfcart and were able to control the acceleration and brakes autonmously. By the end of the summer this is what our progress looked like!

When the semester has begun our group of members working on this expanded from six to about 25. We had four teams that worked on separate part of the projects. I had the privilege of continuing to work on the hardware portion of the project with the goal of being a resource for the new members but also to hone some of the skills I picked up over the summer. Later in the semester than we had hoped we had the cart fully outfitted to be autonomous. Here is what this point in the project looked like!.

If you would like to follow our progress feel free to check out this website I have helped put together av.cise.jmu.edu