Sunday, March 29, 2015

Week 11


This week Brigette submitted the revision 2 PCBs and printed the H-Bridge and logical boards. She soldered all the components onto the PCBs and then began testing. There are flaws with the H-Bridge PCB and the logic PCB. This week has been completely utilized towards debugging the PCBs. She is not completely aware of the problem with the boards right now but is working hard to make sure they are up and running by the end of next week.




Trent Wargo was assisting Brigette Cochran in working on the H-Bridge. After spending several hours trying to debug the H-Bridge and logic board, Trent moved back to working on the power distribution circuit board that he had already been working on. By the end of the week, Trent had a PCB design created with Eagle and sent his design to Jim Weber to be printed. Next week, Trent plans to have parts implemented in the power distribution circuit board to begin testing the PCB.


The computer vision team is now trying to combine Gabe's current algorithm with a camera calibration program. Harris is currently writing a MATLAB code that can solve for the values of the transformation matrix and the translational vector of the camera plane to the real world plane, RRrc. After this Gabe will utilize the following code to complete the required tests.


Monday, March 23, 2015

Week 10

This week Brigette worked on finalizing the second revision of the PCB. Jim was trying to get the PCB mill up and running so she also started and completed the first revision of the Logic board to be utilized in conjunction with the H-Bridge. After the PCBs are completed next week she will run a continuity test and solder on the necessary components to each board. This will allow the mechanical and software teams to plug into the robot and begin final phase testing. This week she and Trent wargo also finished the final testing document for the H-Bridge to be submitted to Dr. Mangum and Dr. Isenberg this Monday.

This week, Trent Wargo has been working on the Linear Power Supply circuit. The circuit is designed to have a 12V input and linearly regulate a 3.3V, 5V and 12V output to be used by other electronics. A prototype has been built and tested. The final step for completion of the Linear Power Supply circuit is to have it implemented as a PCB. 

Gabe has spent the last week and spring break putting the final touches on the vision system. He has nearly completed final testing. Thus far the system seems to maintain an accuracy of approximately one inch. Gabe will be completing a test document for the system over the weekend. After that Gabe will be working with Harris to complete the PNP calibration script.
Gabe and Karl have also worked to create a remote desktop between the minibox and an android tablet to create a user interface.

This week, Karl continued his work towards establishing a socket network between the minibus computer and the beaglebone black micro controller. After consulting with a few Dr. Isenberg and Dr. Davis, the bug in the prototype code was resolved and a line of communication was established Friday afternoon. The decoder input program written by Trent Gardner was slightly modified to calculate the decimal value of the decoder output. With both these pieces working, progress towards establishing an odometer and position generator for the robot are making rapid headway. 

This week, Jaya finished writing the test document for the controller to be used by the robot. Net week Jaya will convert the controller code from MatLab to Python while Karl works on connecting the minibus to the beaglebone black micro controller. After that is done, Jaya will write the real control program that will be used by the beaglebone black. 

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Weeks 8 & 9

At the beginning of  week 9, Brigette Cochran and Trent Wargo completed testing and analyzation of the H-Bridge prototype. Brigette will continue with the H-Bridge until its final completion. She is currently constructing a PCB design for the H-Bridge using EAGLE. Upon completing the design in EAGLE, it will be printed on campus with the PCB mill. The PCB for the H-Bridge is in the final stage of design in Eagle so it should be printed over spring break. 

Trent has moved on to a different area of design and has begun to create a circuit that will serve as the 3.3, 5 and 12 volt power supply to be used by the various electrical components. The power supply will receive its input power from the Jupiter 12 volt battery which with be passed into several parallel linear voltage regulators. The regulated voltages will be passed into a relay circuit that can be activated by the Beaglebone. The power supply design has been designed and the schematic has been drawn. More testing and development will be done in the near future.

For week 8, Gabe was able to complete rough outs of all vision system components. The program he has created is capable of detecting the edge of the sidewalk reliably.
He will spend the next couple of weeks increasing the robustness of the program and completing testing of the localization abilities of the system. Gabe intends to have the vision system completely finished and verified by March 16. After that point he will be working to integrate the vision system with the other sensors

For week 9, Gabe spent this week finalizing a usable draft of the vision code. His code is now capable of determining the camera distance from the edge within an accuracy of about half an inch. He also has set up a series of test grids and lines that will allow him to perform final tests to verify the system accuracy and write a report on its performance.

Week 8, Harris was trying to calculate the camera position and pose in real world
coordinates.  An eight by eight grid map was drawn and registered into the camera
feed. Three image points were chosen to match the object points of the grid map.
The H homography transformation turns all the real world coordinates into image
coordinates. However, a stipulation in the python code is matching the image
coordinates with the real world coordinates incorrectly. Once this code is refined,
the camera matrix can be entered by using translation and rotation matrices and
will be able to output the camera position and pose. The only problem that can be
foreseen is entering the translation and rotation matrices incorrectly into the
program or solving them with a minor math error in the calculations.
Starting next week , Harris hopes to apply this program using the Tour PNADDER as
the inertial frame and make changes accordingly for the minor tests.

Week 9,  Harris was able to translate real world object points into image points
and translate between them in a Python code written from scratch. The eight by
eight grid map was registered into an image feed using OpenCV in Python and
random object points were selected to be translated and outputted as image points.
The translation from object points to image points has become more accurate and
will help with the camera calibration program. However, when the camera was put
at an angle greater than twenty degrees the outputted angle was incorrect. This will
have to be fixed within the next week.

Week 9,  Jason measured the robot and started to design the outer shell. Using the measurements, he made a model of the shell using CATIA. He also designed a way to attach the shell onto the base platform. Finally, Jason looked into the use of foam and the methods of working with foam for how to build the shell. 
Next week Jason plans to get the foam and start measuring and cutting the foam to create the mold for the shell. He plans to have the mold finished by the end of the week after spring break.

Week 8, Tanner was trained on how to use the lathe and milling machine, Using these machines he was able to turn down shafts to fit encoders. He was aslo able to use the millin machine to fabricate the tensioner for the chains. 
Week 9, Tanner started making final touches on the drive systen and was able to size, cut, and tension the drive chains into place. After a test run with attaching the motors to a power supply it was seen that the Nomex Honeycomb composite used for the base of the rover did not posses the strength to hold the drive system sturdy. Tanner will be fabricating a couple alluminum parts to make up for this issue in the next week.