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Lillie’s Status Report for 02/27/2021

This week I helped finalize the project proposal presentation slides. I also met with my team to put together a bill of materials. I 3D modeled custom chess pieces for the game. Each piece has the same circular platform on the bottom that will help the grabbing mechanism pick the pieces up. I’ve been researching what type of gripping mechanism we should use. I’m trying to figure out if a hinged gripping mechanism would be better than a gripper that retracts up and down so as not to knock over other pieces.

This week I will be finishing the gripper design and beginning the web client interface.

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Team Status Report for 02/27/2021

This week our team met to work on visualizing our design and finding compatible components to go with them. We have created our initial bill of materials, with an estimated $150.00 worth of materials, which leaves us plenty in case of unforeseen issues.

Additionally, we began working on setting up our OpenCV environment, as of now we just wanted to see how the edge detection would work for our project. We have a basic implementation which can do edge detection on a live video feed.

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Luis’ Status Report for 02/27/2021

This week involved attending all proposal presentations for section E. Aside from in class work, my group spent significant time working on a design and a parts list. After searching through components we currently own, components the department has ready to lend, and searching online we have pieced together a list of compatible pieces we hope to order soon. Also worked on an initial look into OpenCV and using it for piece detection within our project.

Our initial schedule had us doing a lot early on, in order to account for falling behind or tasks taking longer than expected. This extra time we gave ourselves will be used this upcoming week as we hope to begin setting up our raspberry pi environment. We will also continue with our initial plan for this week of working on the Design Review Slides and Report.

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Juan’s Status Report for 02/27/2021

This week I worked on and presented the Project Proposal slides. I participated in developing the final design for our system. I have looked further into the OpenCV setup for the Raspberry Pi, but I have not set it up yet. In terms of schedule I am behind in setting it up and will catch up in this following week. This upcoming week I will catch up on the OpenCV setup and will also work on setting up the rest of the Raspberry Pi environment.

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Luis’ Status Report for 02/20/2021

This week I worked alongside the rest of the team to decide on our project and scope. We then set time aside to meet and work on our Proposal Presentation. I also took time aside to set up and organize the website, along with set up our Google Sheets gantt chart, which a screenshot of can be found in our proposal presentation slide deck.

This upcoming week I plan to set some time aside for determining a bill of parts, and to have these ordered by the end of the week. I also plan on doing some preliminary readings and research to help guide our design choices further on.

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Team Status Report for 02/20/2021

The most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of our project is not being able to establish a strong wireless connection between the gantry and web interface. In the event that we are unable to achieve this we can establish a wired connection. Another potential issue would be if the pandemic gets worse and we are unable to use TechSpark for rapid prototyping the parts we need for the gantry. To best mitigate this risk we aim to design and print most, if not all, the 3D printed parts we need for this project by 2/28/21.

Our initial project idea was to create a robotic arm controlled via computer vision. After feedback from faculty and TAs, we decided to pivot our project idea to something more suitable for our skillset. Instead of a robotic arm, we are creating a chess robot that uses computer vision to detect and facilitate piece movement. This change was necessary because the robotic arm idea was a bit too controls heavy, and most of our expertise is in software and hardware. The only cost of this change was time because we had not yet began making the robotic arm.

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Lillie’s Status Report for 02/20/2021

This week I met with my teammates and capstone advisor to get feedback on our project idea. After getting some feedback and further discussion with the team, we did some more research and flushed out the criteria we wanted our project to meet. After determining what exactly we wanted our project to do we worked on the project proposal presentation and created a Gantt chart to schedule and assign tasks. I am on schedule this week since we have just been working on specifying our plan and determining what milestones we want to accomplish and when. I plan to 3D model the basic pieces we need for the gantry this week and submit those models to be printed by the end of the week. I also plan to get a basic outline of the web interface the user will be interacting with started.

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Juan’s Status Report for 02/20/2021

This week I gave input to our changing project idea. I am on schedule as I have begun looking into the OpenCV framework that we will need for our system. This week we have worked on our initial documentation. This coming week I will be working on ordering the parts for our gantry as well as working on the front end of our web client,

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Tartan’s Gambit

Tartan’s Gambit aims to integrate a physical experience with remote chess playing. We offer a solution consisting of a robotic gantry and web-based application. By simply placing the gantry over the board and pairing it with the lobby for your web game, you can play a physical game of chess remotely against other players.

Our system will be able to detect how chess pieces are moved, send an update to the web lobby, and have the opposing player see these updates on their screen. When a player receives a move, in addition to the virtual game board being updated, they will see our gantry take care of the movements and update the physical board.

Players are given a fair range of freedom in regards to how they want to use the gantry. Moving pieces can either be done physically or through the web app in which case the gantry will update the piece.