This past week, I mainly worked on finishing up the report and once again tuning the mechanical design based on feedback from the TA and Professor. For the report, I modified and consolidated our diagrams according to feedback to show both our use case requirements and design requirements, and created tables to organize some of the information in the report. Updated design can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15j3AFNqRnFr1QK4KOhniSD_vvZ2-SMlD/view?usp=sharing
I also worked on defining the abstract, design architecture, and information related to materials, hardware, and mechanical aspects of the project, and helped out with formatting to make sure all parts of the report flowed with each other.
Earlier in the week, Ting and I met with Professor Mukherjee to set up the environment we needed to work on our project on the 1305 GPU machines. Using XQuartz, we set up pytorch using miniconda and created a shared afs folder to allow for our members to all access the project files. This setup process is something we had to learn in order to use the GPUs to train our model.
The mechanical design and building aspect is something that we will need to continue to learn more about in order to properly execute our bin itself. During class, I worked with Ting to finalize the mechanical measurements for the bin given the newer set up with an axle. After feedback during Wednesday’s meeting, we found that the design that we had come up with (all acrylic, clamp to hold dowel on lid frame and other end glued/drilled into door) was mechanically weak due to the thinness of the material and the space we had we were attempting to drill into (ie. height and depth). We then decided to redesign the bin with as little change as possible to avoid having to switch up materials, this time having a wooden lid frame with support legs while maintaining the bin and acrylic door. This way we can more securely drill into the frame and not have the weight of the entire frame rest on the plastic bin below. I then looked into the new materials we needed for this implementation.
In terms of progress, we are behind in regards to the mechanical and hardware portions since our ordered parts have yet to arrive. However, we have simulated the hardware parts and hope that by end of spring break, they will arrive so that we can begin building.
The week after spring break, I hope to have started the mechanical and hardware building and finish ordering any remaining parts from the new design so that we can catch up to our original schedule.