Juan Cortes, Luis Ortega, Lillie Widmayer – Carnegie Mellon ECE Capstone, Spring 2021
This week I caught up on the OpenCV tasks from the previous week. I helped set up two different real time edge detection algorithms using OpenCV. I also helped finalize the Bill of Materials and the design for our gantry system. I also helped create the slides for our Design Review using feedback from our Proposal presentation. This week, I will be working on the assembly of our gantry system, working on the website and improving our detection of the board lettering.
This week I worked with my group to get the parts list finalized and submit orders for parts. I also have been researching the best gripper mechanism. I’m deciding between a simple gripper like the first picture or a 4 bar linkage gripper like the second picture. A 4 bar linkage gripper might be better because we need the gripper to retract a bit vertically so it doesn’t knock over pieces as the gantry moves it. However, a simpler gripper with a rack and pinion mechanism to move it vertically may be easier to implement.
I have also starting working on the web application for interacting with the board. Chessboard.js is an open source API that will make creating the web client much faster. I am waiting to be approved for TechSpark access to send the chess pieces I designed last week to be 3D printed.
This week I plan to continue working on the web client interface and send the chess pieces to be 3D printed after I receive access to TechSpark. I also plan to finalize the gripper design and either 3D print or laser cut it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,