This week I worked on writing and begin the testing of the stroke generating algorithm. As mentioned in the design report, there are two stroke types. The outline stroke draws the outline of one segment, and the fill-in stroke fills in that object. They are both of the same color and made up of many line segments. The algorithm for the outline stroke involves using contour finding through the OpenCV library, and then turning the outline curve into a list of ordered points. This is done by following the boundary of an object and storing all the points. Then, evenly spaced points are placed along the curve to turn it into a list of line segments. The algorithm for the fill-in stroke involves going from top row to bottom row of segment. Each row has a width of the brush. Its starting x-coordinate is the mean of all the starting x-coordinates in the row and the ending x-coordinate is the mean of all the ending x-coordinates in that row. I’ve also started to design a framework to test this without having to use the actual robot. This will be a simulation of drawing strokes. I also helped 3D print a batch of clamps.
My goal is to demonstrate the working algorithm on the simulation by midpoint demo day. Thus, I am slightly behind schedule. However, if I finish writing the algorithms by Wednesday and work on the testing and simulation framework after that, I will be able to complete all the requirements by midpoint demo day.
My goal this week is to finish writing the algorithms and continue developing the testing framework. I hope to be done with writing the algorithms by Wednesday. I should have the framework complete by the end of next week.