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Sophia’s Status Report for 10/9

This week I focused on building the glove prototype since all of our parts and sensors came in.  I had started at the end of last week and wanted to finish by the end of the weekend but unfortunately it took longer than expected.

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I soldered the connections on a protoboard. I made sure to place all the components so that the Arduino USB port would connect the USB cord parallel with the arm. And I also soldered 90 degree male pinouts so that the flex sensors can be removed from the Arduino. And The Arduino and IMU breakout are sitting on some female pinouts so they can be easily removed later as well.

My sewing skills are not very good. It was difficult to sew the flex sensors onto the glove in the perfect position so that they remained aligned along the finger when the fingers bent. Some of the stitches will probably have to be redone in the future.

I also wrote the Arduino sketch to read and output all the values from the sensors at the same time.

Since we built a working prototype on protoboard, we’re not sure if we even need to order a PCB. However, we could make the hardware a lot smaller if we do design one.

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Rachel’s Status Report for 10/9

This week, I presented our Design Review to the class and started writing the Design Review written report. I also got the glove that Sophia built to communicate with the python program and made sure that the data is read in correctly. Throughout the process, I found that some of the connections were slightly loose, so for letters that require movement (such as the letter “j”), sometimes the connection would become undone giving -63.0 as the angle read in from the flex sensor. This is something we will need to improve upon. We could also make the sensors fit more tightly to the glove so that it is more sensitive to bending. I also collected data for Stephanie to test the ML models on. However, since we were not able to find time to meet this week, this data is only from me making the gestures while varying my poses slightly, so we cannot be sure that this ML model will be generalizable just yet– this would require us to get data from more people.

Since putting together the glove and implementing the serial communication took less time than expected, we are actually ahead of schedule. This is good because there are still some things we need to fix with the current system (eg. wire connections and recognition of gesture beginning and end), which may take longer than the time we had left for software+hardware integration and adjustments.

For collecting this preliminary set of data, I used a key press to indicate that I am done making the gesture, but we do not want this to be part of the user experience in the final product, so next week I will work on figuring out how the system will recognize that a new gesture has arrived. I will also work on developing the data normalization algorithm.

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Team’s Status Report for 10/2

This week, we worked on the design review, refining the fake data generation algorithms, and beginning the fabrication of the glove system. Next week we need to give our design review presentation and so Rachel focused on putting together the slides, bringing up any questions for discussion regarding details in our proposed solution and testing plans and completing additional research on the performance of different ML algorithms. Also, since last week, our scope changed so that instead of sensing just 5 gestures, we are back to sensing the ASL signs for all letters in the alphabet. Stephanie worked on changing her data generation algorithm to include the ASL letters. She also experimented with  different parameters, to see if different models would perform better than the default models given. Sophia made the necessary edits to the PCB and is planning to order the PCB by the end of the weekend. She also almost completed building the circuit on a perf board so that next week the team can start testing with the glove.

Next week, we will work on figuring how we are going to get the model to determine when a gesture starts and ends by doing more research on past projects.  Sophia will also complete a preliminary fabrication of the glove by the end of the weekend so that we can begin working with real data streaming in from the sensors. Schedule wise, we are a little bit behind due to slow orders, however, we will have a prototype of the glove to work with which will allow us to make larger strides, despite not having the PCB. We are confident we can make up time in the schedule this upcoming week with the barrier of not having any sensors to use.

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Stephanie’s report for 10/2/2021

This week, my team and I worked collaboratively on the design review slides. Since we changed the number of gestures to recognize from 5 common signs to 21 ASL letters, we had to make sure to include our new scope. With the expansion of the scope, I worked on changing my data generation algorithm to include the ASL letters. I have also examined best performing models I have used in depth, such as using different parameters, to see if they can perform better than the default models given.

We are a bit behind schedule because our orders did not all arrive until Friday, hence putting us behind in making the glove and getting real data. We may have to speed up and do some more work next week to ensure we can get consistent data from both types of sensors. This setback is quite minor in my opinion since we have already gotten started on glove building and pre-determining ML models can save us time in the future.

Next week, we will have the glove built and we will be able to get real data. I will work on processing those data to ensure they are suitable for model training. We will also sign some gestures to obtain a preliminary set of data. Using this data, I’ll be testing the models that I have identified to have the best performances with generated data to find which one does well on the real data and perform further fine tuning to improve their accuracies.

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Sophia’s Status Report for 10/2

This week I worked on editing the PCB board and fabricating a glove with a temporary circuit for initial testing.

It turns out that the PCB I had designed had traces that were too small for power signals and vias that were also too small. I readjusted the design but I have not been able to order it yet. I will order the PCB by the end of the weekend.

All of our parts came in so I began building the circuit on some perf board. I wasn’t able to complete the circuit by today, but I will have it finished by the end of the weekend. I will also sew in the flex sensors by the end of the weekend.  Below is a photo of the semi-complete circuit:

We are on schedule still since we came up with a contingency plan for me being  unable to order and receive the PCB quickly enough.  Building the circuit on perf board will allow us to test collecting streams of data.

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Rachel’s Status Report for 10/2

This week, I mainly focused on putting together the design review slides, making sure that confusions from our proposal presentation will be clarified. Stephanie worked on doing some tests with generated data to identify what model might work best for our use case. As expected, some models performed better than others, so I did research on each model so that we can explain during the design review why some models perform better. I also figured the serial communication between the arduino and our python program, so once our glove is built, we can jump right into training and tuning our ML model.

I would say we are behind schedule because our parts did not come in until Friday. We can only hope that our generated data mimics the real data well enough that our predictions for which model will perform the best is still accurate. If not, that would set us back even more. However, since we have all of our parts (aside from the PCB, which isn’t a critical component of this project), I believe we can make up for lost time this week.

Next week, I will work on figuring how we are going to get the model to determine when a gesture starts and ends by doing more research on past projects. Some methods that could work are having a “nothing” pose that separates each sign, having a button to indicate the start of a gesture (not ideal), or waiting some amount of time after receiving data. I am also going to give our design review presentation.