This week I finally obtained the parts on Tuesday. On Wednesday during the remote class work session, I borrowed my roommates monitor and keyboard to set up ssh on my raspberry pi. Since I do not currently own a monitor and keyboard, I will be using ssh until the monitor and keyboard we ordered arrives. I later spent a few hours trying to install cartographer onto the raspberry Pi. I was unable to do so successfully. In our remote work…
My team had several work sessions to combine the different subsystems on a basic level. We decided to ditch Cartographer and ROS SLAM for both complexity and compatibility issues, relying instead on an open source Python package called BreezySLAM. This week, I installed BreezySLAM, ran it through a demo dataset, and extracted the internal data structure representing the SLAM map. I wrote a compression function to reduce the image into a grid heatmap which we plan to do the actual…
This week we were able to start connecting some of the individual parts of our project. We’ve starting to link the frontend and backend of our web application, and export the odometry data of the Roomba to our processing and navigation algorithm. We ran into quite a bit of trouble installing Cartographer ROS onto the Pi, because there were many unresolved dependencies that are poorly documented. We were aware of Cartographer’s package problems before spring break, and spent an additional…
The beginning of the week was spent deciding how to rework our project to something feasible that we would be able to deliver at the end of the semester. The group and I spent an initial meeting discussing what changes we are going to make: what to cut out, what to add, and what concerns we had. I then took this bullet point list and wrote out the full statement of work. Since we decided to add more to the…
This week, aside from meetings with my team and refactoring the project and the statement of work, I personally primarily worked on getting the Server component up and running. We requested AWS credits which I used to provision an EC2 instance, associated with a file backend also hosted by AWS. I set up my SSH access to the machine, and also a GitHub repo which will be used to store our work and deploy to the server. I did some…
This week, I gave a presentation on the design of our project. Later during the weekend, I helped the rest of the team create the design report document as well as set up the Roomba iCreate and the the raspberry Pi. We decided that we would add more ultrasonic sensors to the robot to help it avoid bumping into obstacles like tables. I created the following diagram that illustrates this (and added it to the document): I also updated parts…
This week, I flashed Raspbian onto our microSD and got the Pi up and running. In work sessions with Aditi and Shanel, we fleshed out the Design Report, set up Roomba interfacing and control, configured the Pi’s network connection, and installed ROS. We are on track. Work has begun on every component except the server stack, and the design report is basically done. Next week, we hope to set up the Roomba-Pi interface and execute autonomous programs. We will also…
This week our main focus was on familiarizing ourself with the components. I did some research on the compatibility and specs of the Create 1 model that was available, and concluded that it was not going to be suited for our project, and that we should instead buy a Create 2. The Raspberry Pi we borrowed required some peripherals, but also some setup. For the OS, I would’ve preferred to use Ubuntu Mate, as it is relatively lightweight and very…
This week we focused mainly on starting to test our parts and deciding logistics of our work schedule. We discovered that the roomba available for borrow was a Create 1, made in 2007. In addition to the specs being subpar, there is also little documentation available online for that model. Most supported projects, datasheets, and discussions online are using the Create 2. Therefore, we returned the roomba and requested a purchase of the Create 2. The RPLIDAR is great and…
This week we received the components, including the Roomba, the Rapsberry Pi, the lidar and the camera module. The RPI did not come with an SD card, so we had to find one and install the OS onto it. I managed to get one from ideate, and we placed an order for an SD card. Additionally, we discovered that we received a Roomba 1, which was released in 2007 has far less documentation and support than the Roomba 2. We…