This week I was able to complete the construction of the gantry and begin simple operation of the gantry. This involved printing the remaining parts, attaching all of the parts to the frame after our screws arrived, and calibrating the system in the Makerspace using the levels and tools available there. The completed gantry can be seen in the image below.
In addition to completing the construction of the gantry, I assisted Eric in writing the control software for the gantry. This involved writing control routines such as moving to a specified xy coordinate, initializing the gantry system, moving to a designated pigment in the palette, rotating the servo to make contact with the board, and drawing a specified stroke at a given location. This code is in a prototype form but this layer is completed and can start to be tested on our gantry. I worked with Eric to develop more test suites for our stepper motors in our gantry system, and created simple commands which allow us to move the head, draw lines, and draw a square. This functionalities are shown in the following videos.
I also assisted Harsh by creating a test suite for the painting algorithm which can create a digital model of the strokes which would be delivered to the gantry control layer. This allows Harsh to continue making process and allows him to rapidly debug his code, and also ensures that as long as his code is compatible with the test suite, it will match our gantry layer so long as we successfully implement the single function which the painting algorithm uses.
Overall this week I have remained on schedule. My tasks for the week were to complete motor integration, develop the motor control routines, and control the paintbrush. All of these tasks have been accomplished, which lead into the tasks for the following week which are to test all of the color grabbing and stroke routines on the physical system and begin testing the painting algorithm on the physical system. Eric and I will be working closely together to make sure the gantry control layer can successfully run the routines as expected and offer correct interfaces to the painting algorithm.