Progress
Midpoint-Demo
This week, I presented the work I’ve done with the robot so far. The presentation included a video of the Roomba mapping the room and snaps of the generated maps. I spent some time recording the video and data so it is clear how the robot maps the room. Overall, I think the presentation went well.
Path-finding
I also spent some time developing the path-finding algorithm for the robot. It was helpful that the map already presents a discretized grid version of the space. That way, we can fairly easily implement 8-point connectivity representation of the motion of the roomba. I plan to implement the A* (probably weighted A*) algorithm to traverse grids. However, this introduces another concern. The odometry is particularly susceptible to the turning of the roomba. If we use the 8-point connectivity, that means we need to carefully measure the turning angles. Hopefully the error isn’t big enough to accumulate to a significant value, but we will have to see.
Deliverables next week
Next week, I plan to complete the implementation of path-finding and the consequent driving.
Schedule
On schedule.