November 21, 2025
By Alba Garcia-Sarabia

Get to know mechanical engineering Capstone Design team Tugger Trax and learn about their project, "Safety Warning and Visualization Alert System for Tugger Drivers," before they showcase it at the Fall 2025 Capstone Design Expo on December 1. The team is advised by Associate Professor Seung-Kyum Choi.
 

Can you tell us about your team and project? 

Our team is comprised of 6 interdisciplinary students, including:

• Joe Brown – Mechanical engineering major from Monroe, Georgia
• Ryan Meredith – Mechanical engineering major from Marietta, Georgia
• Nicolas Salischiker – Computer engineering major from Seattle, Washington
• Lauren Saponaro – Industrial design major from West Long Branch, New Jersey
• Josh Schilling – Mechanical engineering major from Des Moines, Iowa
• Eli Scornik – Mechanical engineering major from Monroe, Georgia

Our project is sponsored by Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA) and aims to resolve frequent collisions between parking Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and operator-driven tugger vehicles within its advanced electric-vehicle manufacturing facility. These incidents pose safety risks to employees and cause costly downtime to high-value equipment and production flow. We have been commissioned to design and validate a proof-of-concept collision avoidance system capable of reducing AMR-tugger incidents by 90% while maintaining seamless integration with existing plant logistics and communication infrastructure.
 

What was your team’s design process, how do you go about separating tasks, and what are some of the biggest challenges you have faced?

Our team began our design ideation with initial research followed by a large-scale brainstorm to develop as many potential designs as possible. Once we selected a few preliminary designs, we analyzed customer needs and engineering requirements to narrow our scope to our current design: an ultra-wideband real-time locating system (UWB RTLS) with a driver experience simulation and student-designed user interface to demonstrate the functionality of our system.

We separated tasks primarily by skill set. Several members were specialized in fields relevant to our project, so we divided the work according to who could do it best.

The largest challenges we have faced so far have been creating the driver simulation and creating the UWB RTLS. The simulation provided a unique challenge, due to the necessity to accurately depict the working environment of the tugger drivers. As for the UWB system, it has posed a challenge due to the testing required to characterize, tune, and utilize the hardware so that it can correctly locate moving AMRs and tuggers in 3D space.
 

Have there been any highlights while working on your project?

While getting hands-on work with a company has been fun, we are particularly looking forward to visiting the plant to see where our system will be operating.
 

Can you tell us about your experience working with a sponsor?

Our experience working with Hyundai has been very positive. Communication has been frequent and informative, and there have been minimal delays in receiving the information that we need to advance our project.
 

What team attributes have contributed the most to your success?

Our team's effectiveness reflects our members’ breadth of skills, expertise, and experiences, as well as our shared work ethic and strong sense of collaboration. Ryan’s background in energy storage and manufacturing informed the hardware integration of the Pi system, complemented by Nico’s software engineering skills to work on the system programming. Joe’s experience in engineering analysis and manufacturing research supported the setup and validation of the technology and sensor components of the alert system. Josh’s programming knowledge has been utilized when interpreting historical AMR data and integrating it into our Webots simulation. Lauren contributed her UI/UX experience towards the design and implementation of the alert system’s user interface. Eli’s prototyping skills have contributed to the materialization of our Webots simulation.
 

If you could go back in time, what advice or message would you give your team on day one?

Work steadily and get ahead. You’ll do fine.

The Fall 2025 Georgia Tech Capstone Design Expo will be held on Monday, December 1, at McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Tech campus. At the Expo, over 600 seniors from various disciplines of engineering and industrial design will showcase their innovative projects designed and built during their Senior/Capstone Design course. Register to attend here!

This semester's Expo includes industry sponsors whose donations support Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech.

Companies, entrepreneurs, and organizations interested in sponsoring projects in the Capstone Design class can contact Amit Jariwala. For more information on what projects are a good fit for the course, please review this brief YouTube video.