Week 13

Over the course of the week, Karl researched and tested creating a threaded server, capable of connecting to multiple clients, and differentiating the data those clients are sending/sent. By the end of the week, a successful system was implemented with test code. With this capability, having a threaded server running running in the main script, on the minibox, will now be able to connect to both clients managing the individual decoder data, as well as the client running on the tablet. Karl also tested the odometry on the robot itself, demonstrating that values were being returned sequentially. A small bug needs to be addressed, however, considering the values returned were slightly shifted from their true values. 

Gabe spent the week finalizing camera localization. The Vision System is now capable of determining the distance and orientation of the robot from the edge of the sidewalk. Gabe will spend the next week preparing the system for full integration with the robot and other control and sensor systems.

This week, Trent Wargo has been working on the power supply system. He has been able to assemble several PCBs and stack them together into a tower type assembly. With the tower fully assembled, the minibox, Beaglebone, fans, encoder/decoders and other electronics can now be successfully powered with the on-board batteries.

This week Brigette had a breakthrough with the H-Bridges. She got a set of H-Bridges and Logic-Boards working and wired together. The H-Bridges are now mounted to the chassis and fully functional. The robot took its maiden voyage this week and successfully went forward and backwards using an Analog Discovery to send a single PWM and direction signal to the logic boards. Within the next few weeks she anticipates helping with the odometry, IMU, and software control system. 

This week Harris has figured out the proper format of the equations that are used in the camera calibration process. His MATLAB code will be refined and completed by the beginning of next week. The parameters being solved for must then be implemented into a simply Python code which will give Gabe the x, y, and z coordinates of the vector that translates the camera frame to the ground’s frame along with the rotation angles of the transformation matrix of the camera.

Jaya and Jason spent this week assembling the individual pieces of the foam shell, and sanding/filling the surface to represent the desired shape. Once the necessary supplies are in, they will layer fiberglass, using a wet layup technique, overtop the foam.