Since the last status report, the main thing that I have worked on is the design for the SLAM subsystem and for path planning (both global path planning and local path planning). I finalized the overall design, with scan matching-based SLAM used similar to Hector SLAM, and with Dijkstra’s algorithm for global path planning and TEB for local path planning. These designs are described in detail in the Design Report, which I worked on significantly along with the rest of the team.
My progress is on schedule at the moment, with the goal from before having been to have completed the design at this point. I had also wanted to have an initial version of the software working by this point, but that was not feasible yet since the team and I were still working on finishing the design and figuring out the details. I did however find GitHub pages with code for both Hector SLAM that we can use as a starting point for SLAM, and for TEB which we can use as a starting point for local path planning. These are shown in the Design Report.
By next week, my goal is to have these initial versions of the code running correctly on the Raspberry Pi. This will involve working on the software and setting it up in the ROS environment. Additionally, I will order the necessary hardware for these (mainly just the Lidar scanner, plus any wires needed to interface with the RPi) and have this connected to the RPi.