As a team, we think that we are behind schedule. Our critical parts have mostly arrived so we can hopefully verify the setup and environment next week. We hope to have a working development environment with all the necessary libraries and other SW installed by the end of next week. If our parts are somehow damaged or something goes wrong, our contigency plan is to focus on more of the SW side since that does not require any hardware. Our design and specification has changed from last week. The scope of our project has changed to just utilizing LIDAR sensors. We tried to verify that the sensor was working but ran into issues with that. We aim to have this set up and verify that it works by the end of next week as well.
Raymond Xiao’s status report for 02/19/2022
We slightly pivoted this week with our project now encompassing a smaller scope due to budget constraints. The robot will now be using exclusively LIDAR. I am reading more into the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX series data sheet: (https://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/embedded/secure/jetson/Xavier%20NX/Jetson-Xavier-NX-Series-Data-Sheet_DS10184001v1.8.pdf?RwvrEpSebwaOytLQ66MD9K5ghU9ONWDM977MctsH8irfeqa5z2t5m_6PhbChnOWBGtMBuG0euTPVDpZT9sysELocAQnBVkATGDmTIvpHpM_GXdvoy6w6C5ga3aQCXmlp6pIBdy6kOV56YAQ1NOMsoPrgw5q2ym4TqjyBdhpiEaCKl5SGN3RmhAqzB81a0OphuGlYipjtTcvkamrSTO8&t=eyJscyI6ImdzZW8iLCJsc2QiOiJodHRwczpcL1wvd3d3Lmdvb2dsZS5jb21cLyJ9).
The serial interfaces for this SoC include UART and I2C so we have multiple options to explore. For I2C, I explored libraries to help us define generic interfaces. One promising one is https://luma-core.readthedocs.io/en/latest/interface.html which lets you define a ready to go I2C object and handles all the setup for you. We are still waiting on some parts that have not yet arrived since we pivoted (SD card converter + rechargable battery + LIDAR sensor). I would say we are behind schedule right now but once the above components arrives, we can finally begin working with the Jetson and Roomba. To catch back up to schedule, I am focusing more on the software and trying to gain a better understanding of the Jetson to make setup easier and more efficient.
Raymond Xiao’s status update for 02/12/2022
We have most of our main components ordered already. We are still looking for side peripherals to interact with the Jetson like a SD card as well as mouse and monitor. This week, I have been working on learning how to interface/program the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier we have received. I am responsible for setting up all the connections between the Jetson and sensors + Roomba. Specifically, I am trying to setup the foundation (ROS and OpenCV) on the Jetson. I am a bit behind in progress since I am still waiting on necessary supplies. To catch up to schedule, I plan to devote more time next week. For next week, I hope to have an initial ROS environment set up and some code that can interface (UART) with the Roomba.