- What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project?
At the moment, our main risks are associated with meeting timing requirements while making sure we can work with the hardware effectively. Since our eCAM50 is built for the Jetson Nano, we are temporarily pivoting to the Nano platform and working on getting the camera integrated. From this experience, we are seeing that it will be essential to have an extended ribbon cable to connect the camera to the Jetson to ensure reasonable wearability. However, as important as wearability is, we do not want this to hinder our overall product capabilities. One thing that Alex mentioned to us early in the design process was that lengthening the camera cable could significantly affect latency. Until now, we have mostly been working individually on our personal systems, since we are now testing out camera integration with the Nano and beginning to integrate our independent parts on the device, this may require us to rely on WiFi, which the Nano provides over the Xavier AGX.
- How are these risks being managed?
We currently have 22 days until the expected date of the interim demo on Nov 16th. Our goal for the interim demo is to be able to showcase how raw captured data is processed at each stage of our pipeline, from the camera, to the text-to-speech. Because we are temporarily pivoting to the Nano, we are putting less of a focus on latency so that we can focus on demoing functionality. As a result, we plan to work extensively on camera and software integration starting this coming week, and speaker integration the week after. We believe that such a schedule will guarantee enough time to troubleshoot any of the potential issues and further optimize our system.
- What contingency plans are ready?
In case everything goes wrong in terms of integration of the e-CAM50 or the Nano does not provide the performance that we need, we do have a final contingency plan of falling back on the non-wearable fixed format using Jetson Xavier AGX instead of Nano. However, with proper time management and collaboration, we firmly believe that everything will be completed in time.
- Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)?
Due to several constraints of the Jetson Xavier AGX (wireless connectivity, weight, I/O), we are considering altering our plan to work with the Jetson Nano. The Jetson Nano would provide wifi capabilities as well as integrate well with the camera that we already have. It also serves to decrease power draw in case we want to package our final prototype as a portable battery powered wearable. The main trade-off would be the performance difference. With this being said, we believe that the Nano will provide us with enough speed to match the necessary pre/post processing as well as classification subsystems.
- Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?
This change is necessary due to our product’s use case, and need for mobility. With the Nano being smaller and containing its own Wifi, we can better integrate our design and make it more wearable and usable. The main cost for this change would be the decrease in performance capabilities, but we believe it will be able to handle our processing sufficiently. Going forward, we do not believe it will change the overall course of our schedule, and the next two weeks will still be essential for the development of our product before the interim demo.
- Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.
Following Fall Break, we debriefed and re-assessed our progress and what we needed to do before the Interim Demo. As a result, we’ve moved camera and speaker integration up earlier in our Gantt chart. As we move closer to the integration phase, we will need to keep a closer eye on the Gantt chart to make sure everyone is on the same page and ready to integrate their deliverables.
