This past week, I made progress on making the Jetson Nano and all the other connected hardware portable with the iRobot Create 2. To do this, I first figured out how to power the Jetson Nano and the Intel depth camera with the rechargeable battery we had. After testing that all our software worked as normal on the Nano when it was powered by the battery, I moved to testing the software with the Create 2 robot free to move after the tennis balls. This was not possible earlier since the camera and Jetson Nano were being powered from the wall outlet. We temporarily taped the camera to the front of the robot and also placed the Jetson Nano on top. When Rashmi held a tennis ball in front of the robot, the robot accurately followed the tennis ball, which shows that our software is working.
On the hardware side, I helped Ryan attach the arms and motors to the Create 2 robot so that the tennis ball collection system was mostly complete. We screwed the acrylic ramp to the arms and tested the hardware system. We manually controlled the robot and were able to launch the tennis balls that were funneled into the robot.
Next week, I plan on working on integrating the software and hardware into 1 system and also building the platform on which we will place the Jetson Nano, Intel camera, and battery. The 2 systems seem to be working well independently, but merging them together will be challenging.