The main focus of our team this week was making some final selections of in preparation for our design review. A lot of this focus was around our sensor. At the beginning of the week, we were looking into transitioning away from a rotating LIDAR Sensor to an array of stationary LIDAR and ultrasonic sensors, but after a thorough review of this idea and the introduction of the possibility of the use of microwave sensors, we decided to move to the newer microwave technology. The sensors we selected will give us a 20m range without the sensitivity to light that concerned us with the LIDAR sensors. The sensors have a horizontal 3db beam width or 78 degrees, meaning a small array of such can easily cover our field of view. The sensors can also track multiple objects, though they only give back distance information without any information concerning the look direction.
We also looked at the lights to be used for signaling and the draws this would have on power. Though we had found some promising looking single point LEDs they had low efficiency, so we have currently transitioned back to using an LED strip both in the front and back. Our want for a full day of use and the large draws of both these LEDs and the sensor will require a rather large battery. Some discussion has also been had about using an Arduino in conjunction with the STM32F4 to run the lights, and it has also tentatively been decided that the signals processing interface and code will be written in C code.
Design review slides to be amended later or posted separately.