This week I worked on the software portion of the motor controller. I completed the initial setup for the Jetson Xavier, and installed the packages we would need for our project. Since the computer vision algorithms would be run on python, and the Arduino code is in C/C++, I wrote the communication channel between the Jetson Xavier and the Arduino.
The screenshot shows how the two entities communicate with each other when fed in some data. I also have written the logic of the drive train, specifically the omnidirectional logic for the different motors to move in different directions. I also briefly looked into the software code of adding encoders to our motors. Since the Intel Realsense cannot detect an object in a short distance frame, the drive train would need to travel a fixed distance after applying the computer vision detection from far away. Adding encoders would provide closed-loop feedback to ensure high accuracy. Since the hardware parts have not arrived yet, I am not able to tune any parameters of the skeleton code. Hence, the project is delayed behind schedule, but hopefully, the hardware parts would arrive early next week, and I am able to construct the robot and have an initial test of the motors and drive train accuracy.