This week, I focused on developing the software infrastructure design and expanding the project’s design report. My work translated our high-level architecture into a more detailed plan for connecting sensing, localization, mapping, navigation, and multi-robot communication. This included identifying existing software components we can reuse, specifying the interfaces between them, and identifying the features that still require project-specific implementation.
I researched and documented the software stack for the Raspberry Pi and ROS 2 environment. The proposed stack combines sensor drivers, a motor and encoder interface, robot_localization, SLAM Toolbox, and Nav2. I also compiled links to the relevant software repositories and documentation, identifying hardware-dependent gaps such as the final motor-controller interface and validation of the selected IMU driver.
A major part of this work was specifying how the components connect. I documented the expected sensor topics, filtered odometry, occupancy maps, and navigation actions.
My progress is currently slightly behind due to our delays in hardware component acquisition. Since we have defined the necessary components for the project, I believe that this delay should not affect my timeline, since linking together the components on actual hardware should be fairly straightforward. Next week I will test our proposed software on the actual hardware, since they should have arrived by then.