Team Status Update 3/28

We’ve been working on implementing our new responsibilities as well as ordering our new parts.  Overall we have been working on implementing the different pieces of our pipeline but have yet to put them all together.

Andrew’s Status Update for 3/28

This week has been focused on ensuring that we have the parts that we need. I have been working on piece identification as well ensuring that the piece features can match to the overall image.  I’ve been splitting up some of the work from future weeks, but it feels like a natural progression.

Team Status Report for 3/21

Our team has been discussing ways of adapting our project given that the university is closing and we will not have access to any physical materials for our project.  We have decided to move to a simulation based project that keeps the core of our project the same. While scaling back the physical parts of our project we are able to include design studies to trade off and test the limits of our algorithm. We will be able to test our algorithms against down-sampled versions of the image pieces so that we will hopefully be able to see what camera resolution would be needed if the original project was physically realizable.

Connor’s Status Update for 3/21

It has been an unbelievable week for all of us. Given that the Carnegie Mellon education has gone completely remote, we have been tasked to redesign our project. I have mainly spent my time on brainstorming how we can tackle similar engineering problems, within our new constraints. However, all week the situation has been rapidly changing. Along with my teammates, I have helped formulate our new product idea. Next week, I’d like to refine our project by heavily researching some of our tradeoffs, like which packages to use for our UI or what algorithm to use for the puzzle creation.

Aneek’s Status Update for 3/21

This week our project changed significantly due to the COVID-related moves to remote instruction. Unfortunately, the main work I’ve done so far relating to the finger & tap detection is no longer a part of our final project, which is moving to a completely digital project and containing more significant design trade studies on various CV algorithms. This week Andrew, Connor, and I mostly worked on how to change our project to work under these new conditions and the exact mechanics of what this new, digital puzzle solver will look like to the user.

Andrew’s Status Update for 3/21

Been working with my team and my Professor and TA about how to transition our project into something that is doable given the new “design constraints” that COVID-19 has imposed.  We have been working to figure out ways to keep the core of our project largely the same but involve no physical parts in order to make the project able to be completed while socially distancing as well as keeping the project in a state that will not have each member of the group tied to a piece of the project that another member may be actively working on, thus decoupling each member’s work.

Andrew’s Status Update for 3/15

We focused heavily on aspects of our design report that needed to be fleshed out and added more technical details to describe how our project would work. I worked on a variety of sections, but focused mainly on how the OpenCV portions of the project would work. I worked on fleshing out some different aspects of the OpenCV pipeline, including extra testing of what has already been worked on. Overall last week (of school before spring break) was super rough for me, so I’ve been a bit behind.

Next week will be focused on figuring out what our new project will be and overall what to do given everything that has happened.  Super up in the air right now.

Aneek’s Status Update for 3/15

We focused on completing our design report and making many small but important decisions that came up over the course of writing it, which has further defined our project more technically. I mainly worked on my sections for the design report, as well as formatting and assembling the complete document after my teammates finished their sections, which took a surprisingly long time! MS Word formatting isn’t particularly intuitive. I also started tinkering around with OpenCV so I can assist Andrew with the CV portions of our project. The Hand/Tap detection code is done but hasn’t been tested with the Duvetyne fabric yet, so when that comes in, I will switch gears back to that to make sure that section is complete.

My plan for next week will be dependent on what our team and our faculty and TA mentors come up with to accommodate the move to remote instruction.

Team Status Update for 3/15

The week before spring break, we were hard at work completing our the first draft of out final report. It was a great time to evaluate all the progress we have made and work out the kinks of our design. We ordered all of our hardware. All we have left to purchase should be the PVC. As a team, we are still working on our individual tasks. We will likely begin integrating when we all get back from spring break. Then, we will receive all of our ordered parts and begin constructing the frame.

However, due to CMU’s move to remote instruction, our final project could be changing, so our plan for the next week and beyond is in flux right now. We’ll see what we come up with and look forward to completing this project, in this form or another!

Connor’s Status Update for 3/15

The first draft of our final report is complete! The process of completing it forced us to think very critically about the small details of our project. As a result, I feel more confident about our design. In addition, it led me to take a change of course this week. Instead of building the frame, I decided to begin planning out the Animations & Display Builder. I realized that this will take more time than we think. As for the frame, that will be built the week we get back from spring break. I am still deciding whether to use Pygame or another program to create the projected images as I want to find one that will require the least computation.