Team Six/Journal

Revision as of 00:53, 19 January 2015

Day 0, Jan 5

• • Successfully located the third floor of the IDC building and created this wiki page.
  • Set up our Edison board and created a playing field in Solidworks.
  • Github repo created.

Day 1, Jan 6

• • Members received shop training.
  • Basic prototypes of ball collection mechanisms.
  • Work with OpenCV

Day 2, Jan 7

• • Everything is broken
  • Board is broken
  • Power Supply is broken
  • Multimeter to test power supply is broken
  •  :(

Day 3, Jan 8

• • Everything is still broken
  • Test some sensors with an arduino.
  • Create a makefile that can compile all code together
  • Play with opencv
  • Cads cads and prototype

Day 4, Jan 9

• • Board is still broken
  • Ultrasensor,motorcontroller, short IR, ultra short IR tested!
  • All the wires are a mess. Lets try to standardize them. Red power, *black* ground, *Blue*/purple signal (Sensor ->Board) in, *white*/gray signal out (BOARD -> sensor)

Day 5, Jan 10

• • Board is still broken
  • Saturday!! We had pizza at the lab
  • We discuss the organization for the code.
  • Motor encoders tested and functional!
  • Wires are kinda organized

Day 6, Jan 11

• • Sunday. No Lab today. People coding alone.
  • Skeleton code!

Day 7, Jan 12

• • WE GOT THE EDISON BOARD
  • Strategy meeting with the staff!
  • Code architecture meeting with the staff!
  • New ideas about how to lift the blocks: Use only one movement! No need to lift and then spin
  • First prototype of the top sorting mechanism!
  • Code for the ultrasonic sensor and IR sensors pretty much finished.
  • Most of the electronics have very neat wiring now.
  • Multithread seems to be a real possibility now!
  • We can calculate our distance to a wall using the camera!

Goals for the next couple of days:

• • More prototypes
  • Finish PID control, and sensors, and change code from arduino to C++
  • Bring in cookies sometime

Day 8, Jan 13

• • GOT THINGS DONE!

CODE:

** All sensors code written(except color sensor, because we don't have it yet)

• • A sensor module thread written!
  • Simple PID written!
  • PwmUtils written!
  • Simple motor class and actuator written

Mechanical:

• • Worked on a 4 bar linkage system for the robot arm
  • Decided positions of the sensors
  • prototyped sorting mechanism

Day 9, Jan 14

** Gyroscope is working!

• • Prototorotypes of the sorting mechanism and columns
  • Proportional control for speed written, tested and discarded
  • infinity bugs everywhere fixed
  • Cleaned up the code for image processing!
  • Exited the lab at 1:45

Day 10, Jan 15

** Driving mechanism works!

• • Torque limiter for the wheels written, so that they don't slip
  • Integration of encoders with driving to tell distance
  • Test of proportional and derivative gains
  • Drive in a straight line!
  • The robot can now go backwards
  • Angle precision of ~1 degree on the driving code
  • Threshold for the minimum pmw for the motors, so that they can always move
  • Angle error tolerance and position error tolerance
  • Learning how to use the color sensor

Day 11, Jan 16

• • Encoders now give the distance in inches
  • Gains independent of the size of the wheeels
  • Antisocial robot test written.
  • The robot can go backwards!
  • Learning how to use the color sensor

Objectives for the day: Get the color sensor working Add a state machine to the motorscontrol to have a limit in what can be the angle of turning when it is moving Add way points on the motorcontrol code (using relative radial coordinates) Play with localization code

Day 12, Jan 17

** Prototype of the collection and sorting mechanism working. We collected our first block

• • Nice precision when driving: wheels don't slip. We have a 5% precision when moving a certain distance (2 inches in 50)
  • Start of the localization code: we have a map class that represents the positions of walls, blocks, etc.
  • State machine design defined!