Team Three/Journal
Contents |
Day 1
Bowler came in with basic red-ball-tracking openCV code that slowed to an unusable crawl (<1 fps) as soon as we tried it on the acer netbook. Need to optimize. At any rate, everything on the software end is all configured now.
Lesman came in with a sexy CAD design, did most of the pegbot assembling, and is working on custom Arduino firmware.
Jorge did most of the wiring and soldering, only blowing out one voltage regulator in the process. (Thanks to this incident, the contest admins now have the correct spec sheet uploaded to the wiki.)
We got through two checkoffs on the first day, so we're making good time so far.
Day 2
Bowler: got vision code running in C++, detecting balls. Wrapped C++ vision code to run in python.
Jorge: Worked on/read up on mapping. Wired up 2 additional IR sensors and began working on wall-following
Lesman: Worked on robot CAD. We've got a general picture of what the robot will look like, need to various mounting and assembly details.
Generally discussed game strategy and robot design. We're largely "done" checkoff 3, and are hoping to hit 4 and 5 and wall following tomorrow.
Day 3
Jorge got safety trained and wrote a wall follower like a boss
Bowler got vision code working and calibrating like a boss
Lesman wrote a PID class, Utils class and Ballfollower like a boss
Team discussed software design and iterated on CAD model like executive board
Day 4
By popular demand (and Will's request), here are instructions for getting OpenCV configured on your Acer netbook:
- Install Synaptic Package Manager. (Either "sudo apt-get install synaptic" in a terminal, or find it in the Ubuntu Software Center.) Open it.
- Filter-search for "opencv". Mark "python-opencv" for installation. All dependencies will be marked automatically. Hit the "Apply" button.
- You're all set.
Bowler continued working on vision code. Implemented multicore processing. Got into minor argument with fellow ginger Will over the merits of different image processing strategies. Might have to significantly change algorithm. Late that night, started writing out our general software framework.
Jorge continued teaching our robot how to follow a wall, helped with the CAD effort, and is reading large volumes of texts about SLAM as he formulates our mapping algorithm.
Lesman created the basic structure of our software framework, helped out with wall-following, and continued CADding.
We got Checkoff 4 and would have gotten 5 if the staff had the right equipment on hand.
Day 5
Completely finished the chassis cad with all mounting holes and spaces for support structures as well as holes for T assembly and tabs.
We finally got access to a laser cutter and laser cut the skeleton of the robot in blue acrylic. The parts were very close to what we had envisioned.
We got started neatly re-wiring the robot and designed the wheel and gear hubs.
Day 6
Jorge began wiring the new robot.
Day 7
Since we don't have access to a waterjet we decided to laser cut the wheels and some gears. Lesman and Jorge spent most of the day in the machine shop finishing the robot for the mock competition.
Day 8
We finished wiring up the robot including the IR sensors. After a bit of hacking, we had some working code so we decided to test it in the lab's field. The robot found and collected multiple balls.
After a successful dry run at the lab, we decided to head down to 26-100 to participate in Mock 1. The laptop sleeps when we close it and we never figured out how to fix it.
Bowler calibrated the vision code.
We ran the robot multiple times in the competition field to debug the code and fixed some mechanical problems. Turns out the field had huge holes and our robot kept getting stuck. We decided to try an official run but the set screw came loose. Without the set screw the robot could not move so we decided to go have lunch. During the night, we ordered some new parts.
