This week I focused on the development of the RESQ rover and RESQubes. My primary focus was on CAD for RESQube structure, RSSI and RF feasibility studies, component selection, and compatibility testing for the RESQ rover.
For the RESQube construction, I began working on a CAD of the external housing with respect to the dimensions of the RESQube’s components and I conducted some test prints using TPU and PLA to tune the settings of one of the 3D printers we are using and that I own.
For RSSI and RF feasibility studies, I assisted Raghav in his analysis of the mesh network’s feasibility for Thread, ESP-Mesh-Lite, and BLE. From the results he found, I determined along with Raghav and Mehaan that we would require a separate patch or rod antenna for each RESQube and to utilize ESP-Mesh-Lite. This was because the attenuation on the on board antennas was far too weak for our use cases, meaning both the RSSI and node-node mesh would be deficient for our purposes. As such, I conducted a trade study between two patch antenna and one rod antenna compatible with the ESP32-C6 and found a suitable patch antenna that satisfied our SWaP-C needs. Lastly, I worked on compatibility testing between the Jetson Orin Nano, eYs 3D camera, and Intel RealSense LiDAR camera L515. This preliminary testing showed good compatibility between all 3 and showed that our high level system architecture is feasible.
For the weekly meeting, we covered the feasibility study and ordered new antennas, the rover chassis, and discussed our design report. For the design report we are transferring our work and testing results into it to help build the structure better.
For the week ahead we are aiming to finish the system implementation of the RESQubes and testing, which seems feasible with the antennas we ordered coming on Monday. In addition, I hope to finish my parts of the design report that were divided up to me and get a head start on more of the rover’s system architecture, specifically on victim localization using the three prototype RESQubes we will have.