Month: February 2022

Schedule update:
We have purchased and received most of our core components that we need to test, including the ultrasonic sensors, raspberry pi, and some various components. We are still waiting for our OAK-D depth cameras, but in general we are in time for testing our components.

No changes have been made to the schedule so far, next week, we will start testing our sensors and incorporating our raspberry pi into the system.

As for risks, the main part is whether the sensor models will be good enough for our purpose. This is something that we will be testing out next week, if they turn out to be insufficient, we have several backup sensors that we have been looking at, and we will purchase them immediately. If they do work, we will likely purchase more of the same sensors.

This week I peer reviewed other projects, collected the requested Raspberry Pi board, created our git repo, looked into how to set up Raspberry Pi, and ordered a Raspberry Pi SD Card.

This week, we finalized the general idea of our capstone project. Initially, we were weighing between building an embedded system that makes food or drinks e.g, eggs, cocktail, boba tea or something computer-vision based to guide the blind. After hours of discussion and feedback from the faculty, we settled on building a smart wearable belt that can give the visually-impaired users intuitively actionable feedback.

With this idea, we delved deeper and fleshed out more details : naming the project The Bat Belt as the product involves echolocation; comparing existing tech gadgets built by university lab, startups and another capstone team to the traditional cane and our concept; establishing a wider obstacle detection range with more granular haptic feedback as one of our core appeals …

We also recognize the challenges and risks that lie ahead (such as incompatible sensor and microcontroller, software integration with depth camera, mapping multiple sensor data algorithmically into a cohesive feedback) and planned accordingly as detailed in our proposal.

This week I mostly worked on the proposal presentation with my teammates, researching and debating about problem definition, solution approach, sensor tradeoffs etc as we go. Additionally, I placed the orders for ultrasonic sensors and raspberry pi board and worked on formatting of the website. This coming week, hopefully as the parts arrive, I can get a sense of the data collected.