This week our team made significant progress on the robot on the hardware side as well as the software side and we are back on schedule. On the hardware side, we mounted the acrylic ramp, wooden arms, and motors onto the iRobot Create 2 base. Now the tennis ball launching system is securely fixed to the robot and we were able to test that the robot moves around successfully. Also, we were able to manually control the robot and successfully use the motors to launch the balls to the back of the robot. It was exciting to see the hardware work in action.
On the software side, we were able to test that our code works when we transition the Jetson Nano and Intel camera to being powered with the battery instead of from the wall. We placed the Jetson Nano, camera, and battery on the iRobot Create 2. When our code was running, if someone held a tennis ball anywhere in front of the robot, the robot successfully turned towards the tennis ball and moved towards it. This gives us confidence that the computer vision and path planning is working as intended.
Schedule Updates:
Our team is completely back on schedule on both hardware and software. Next week, we plan on working to integrate both the hardware and software systems. Currently, we have tested both systems independently and are confident they work, but putting them together will be a challenge. One of the things we need to do is create a platform on top of the robot so we can place all the hardware needed to run the software on the robot. There don’t seem to be any challenges that are of immediate concern.