I spent the first part of the week helping Chris and Eric research 2D axis parts and design. I spent some time reviewing what the team had found and suggesting some alternatives. I also helped them decide whether we should 3D print most of the parts or order the parts from online. After this, we wanted to 3D print a part to test its precision and quality. I aided in the conversion of the files into a format that could be accepted by the printer in the Morewood Makerspace.
During the last part of the week, I worked on implementing and testing the Mean Shift Segmentation algorithm. This is the algorithm that we are planning to use to turn our original digital images into something that the robot can paint. As we mentioned during our proposal presentation, this algorithm clusters similar colors together and returns an image with segments of the same color. I implemented this using the pymeanshift python library. Below is the original image:
The next image is one with a tight color range:
The following is one with a large color range in one segment:
We can change the parameters depending on how many colors we will have access to when we start creating our paint colors. I have emailed Professor Aswin Sankaranarayanan to discuss tips and ideas about possible imaging algorithms we could use.
My goal for next week is to meet with Professor Sankaranarayanan and finalize an algorithm to use for this project. I will then test it on different images with various parameters to make sure we can get the right images. I will also help the team order the parts we need for the 2D axis and 3D print some of the required parts.
We are mostly on schedule. We have researched the software algorithms. However, I have extended it by a few days to compensate for meeting with Professor Sankaranarayanan next week. We’ve also finished researching and designing the 2D axis, so we are on schedule for that.