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Team Status Report for 10/2

This week each team member individually researched the tasks that we were assigned to. Ludi and Esther also worked on cadding the design for the chassis and the claw of our robot. We met with Tamal and Tao on Wednesday, and received feedback from our proposal presentation. A concept that we discussed in depth was using a vacuum grip system rather than the claw for retrieving the object. Esther did a lot of research into this idea, and the team decided that we will proceed with the claw as we are still very unsure about the vacuum grip design.

We also worked on the design presentation and used the feedback we received last week to update some of our requirements. We discussed our current requirements, such as the distance between objects, height of the shelf, and accuracy measurements, and updated those to reflect the needs that arise from our use case.

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Bhumika Kapur’s Status Report for 9/25

This week I worked on the proposal presentation. I worked with my group members to complete the proposal slides, and we worked together to do some research into the components and algorithms that we are going to use to quantify some of our testing metrics and requirements.  I was presenting for my team this week so I spent a few days preparing for the presentation and getting familiar with the content.

I believe that I and the team are following our schedule well. Based on the Gantt chart that we created last week, our team is in the researching phase for the components/softwares that plan to use for our project. This past week I did some research into cameras for our project, starting with the cameras that are already in the ECE inventory. I found that some of the cameras in the inventory seem to be satisfactory for our project, such as the Sainsmart Imx, which has a 160 degree wide angle lens. But we may have to purchase a more expensive camera such as the Intel RealSense for depth sensing,  as I could not find any depth sensing information on the cameras in the inventory. I also did research into edge detection algorithms, and found that Canny edge detection seems to be the most effective (95%) and thus the one we should use for our project. We also tested out some images with canny edge detection and found that it ran quite fast, in only a few seconds. (see below). This week I plan to continue research cameras and algorithms, and start writing the code for some of the computer vision algorithms we plan to use in our project, if I have time.

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Bhumika Kapur’s Status Report for 9/18

This week the entire team worked on our proposal presentation. We used the feedback we received during our meetings with Tamal and Tao to reconsider some aspects of our project.

I also did some research on the computer vision algorithms that I will be working on this semester. I read some research articles that have been published on detecting a laser pointer,  as I am planning on writing a program that can detect a laser on a box. I also read about edge detection algorithms, as we will need to use edge detection in our project. Finally, I  looked into April Tags and cameras, as we are planning on using both in our project. I looked at the specs and reviews of different cameras, and looked at some April tag tutorials to get a sense of how we will use these components.

So far, I believe I am on schedule. We have just divided up the tasks within the group, and I have began working on my tasks. In the next week, I plan to finalize what edge and laser detection technique I will use, and select a camera for our robot.