This week, I completed researching the possible technologies that our team could use for tracking our paddle using Inertial Measurement Units. My conclusion was that we would use the 6-degree-of-freedom MPU6050 IMU connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless through I2C. I also delved into researching ways to bring up this sensing system, and found several useful sites about how to interface the sensor with the Raspberry Pi, including how to set up the I2C connection, how to write a driver for the IMU on the Raspberry Pi, and also how we can write and run our own software on the Raspberry Pi to process the data from the sensor. I also researched and found existing open-source libraries that run the Madgewick Algorithm, which is a sensor fusion algorithm that will us interpret the sensor data relative to Earth’s axes. Lastly, I also researched potential servers we could use as a game server, and found that we could potentially leverage Amazon Web Service’s Gamelift product, which provides a low-latency game server SDK for Unity that we can integrate into our game. I discussed a plan with our team on how we can attempt to optimize our communications between our sensing system, VR device, and server to minimize latency.
As of now, I think I am perfectly on schedule, as we have ordered our parts and I have good preparation on how I intend to bring up the system. Moving forward into next week, my goal is to begin integrating the IMU with the Raspberry Pi. I hope to figure out how to physically connect the IMU to the Raspberry Pi, and subsequently write a driver on the RPi for the IMU so that we can read the raw data from the IMU into the Raspberry Pi in the next week, so that from there, we can begin figuring out how to process that raw data. This is contingent on our IMU sensor arriving, so hopefully, it will be here by next week. If it doesn’t arrive, I should still be able to get my hands on the Raspberry Pi as we have requested it from CMU inventory, and thus, at the very least, I can try to set up an I2C driver on that.