ayeshag

Ayesha’s Status Report for 3/11

This past week (before spring break) I accomplished a few things. I worked a lot on the design report. Specifically, I worked on writing the web application portion for the requirements and implementation sections, as well as fleshing out a more clear integration portion for each section. I spent a lot of time writing, revising, and reviewing this document, and it took up the majority of the week since it had so much information packed in. I also wrote some miscellaneous sections like the schedule and created a more clear Gantt chart for the paper, compared to our previous schedule. This week I also looked into purchasing the Google Maps API. This took a lot of time because the educational coupon that was provided was not clear in how to purchase the API with it, and the way to purchase the API was very very complicated. None of the staff was able to help me figure out how to purchase it, so it took a lot of time, and unfortunately I will be paying for it on my own, since that was the only way to make an account and the price exceeds $50. However, I have figured out how to purchase it (I think) and will do that post-spring break so that I can use a 14 day free trial and decrease the price and the amount I have to spend.

 

I am a week behind schedule because I did not account for purchasing the API and having to deal with these minor roadblocks of payment to add so much time. I will make up for this in the week after spring break by just working a bit more. Also, I have prepared for next week by looking into code snippets for how to get the google maps API to work, specifically with the marker functionality. That should reduce the time I have to spend doing that next week.

 

Next week I hope to have successfully purchased the google maps API and tested out some code where I am able to add a marker. In addition, I would also like to clean up the page to display the map with the marker.

 

By ayeshag, ago

Ayesha’s Status Report for 2/25

This week I worked mostly on continuing to set up a base for the web application. I created a Django app for our site and created some basic HTML and CSS files to set up a login page. This week, I focused more on laying out each page and outlining what needs to be done for each one, such as a login page, a map tracker page, a photo page, etc. I am also working more on deciding how I want the user experience to be in terms of website flow, such as what should be automatically loaded/redirected and what the user should have to navigate to themselves based on what they want. Next week, I will work more on implementing the actual functionalities for each page. In addition to this, I have also been working on the design review report. I have been specifically been working on the architecture, design requirements, design trade studies, testing, and project management sections. For the first four, I have been focusing on the front end and the specific implementation and design details for the web app. For the project management section, I am focusing on how we are all splitting up our work and the timelines.

 

My progress is on schedule. Next week I plan to request a purchase for the Google Maps API and have a base site set up so that I can work on marker functionality and style tweaks. My goal is to have all of that done by the time my teammates are ready to integrate so that I don’t have to work on both the marker functionality and the integration in parallel.

By ayeshag, ago

Ayesha’s Status Reports for 2/18

This week I worked on setting up the Github repository for my web app and reproducing some files to set up a basic web application for our site. I have set up a login/registration page based on a previous site I made, and made random pages to plan out how we want to set up our own web app. I also looked into purchasing the Google Maps API and how to integrate that into our site, with the ability to save markers. Furthermore, I worked on our design review slides. I laid out all of the information that needs to be added to each slide, including fleshing out a more thorough testing plan with specific metrics and more clearly defined outputs compared to what we had previously said. This allowed us to have a clear idea of how testing would look and what defines a passing test. This took a lot of time and research but was extremely helpful in figuring out how to narrow down our scope and what that should look like.

My progress is on schedule. Next week I plan to start changing the style of some pages and laying out specifics for our site. The week after I plan to start implementing the google maps API. I also plan to work on the design report in the upcoming weeks.

The ECE courses that covered the engineering, science, and math principles we used involved 10-301 (intro to ML) and 17-437 (web app dev). These classes were most useful because I learned a lot of important machine learning principles in 10-301 and also, I did a project in web app dev.

By ayeshag, ago

Team Status Report for 2/11

The most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project are related to integration. The first one will be gathering meaningful images to perform the ML algorithms on. As of now, we have acquired the radar and plan to begin image capturing within the next two weeks. With this comes the challenge of figuring out how to best position and use the radar so that the images it captures can be used with the ML algorithms we train. We will be using a dataset of standstill drone image captures to train our model, but until we begin image capture with the radar, the radar image quality is still a large risk that could delay the integration of the software with the hardware if the radar images are significantly different than the dataset images. These risks are being managed by starting the radar image capture as early as possible (i.e. within the next two weeks), since the ML training process will not be significantly far along before we start image capture. Therefore, we have allotted time to examine the radar captures together and ensure that they work with our dataset. In addition, we have looked into other radar image datasets and sources to find these datasets in case we find that our dataset is drastically different in comparison to our radar images.

One change we made to the existing design of the system is that we narrowed our project scope down to fire search and rescue missions. While we were planning on doing search and rescue missions that did not involve metal, since that would interfere with the radar, we did not explicitly narrow down the scope further than that. We received feedback from our TA that our use case scope was not extremely clear in our presentation and that it would be very helpful to do so in order to make clearer goals for ourselves and allow us to come up with a more specific testing plan. This change incurs no extra costs since it allows us to create more specific plans going forward and narrow down our needs. In addition to this change, we also added the creation of 3D chassis to encapsulate our device and have it rest on the drone legs. We had not previously included this in our project spec, but we needed to include something that would safely keep our entire device together and allow it to attach to any drone that could hold its weight. This did not incur many extra costs, since Angie has experience with 3D printing and was confident she would be able to create this chassis with ease. We had to allot one week to design and print this chassis to hold our radar and raspberry pi, which will occur once we acquire the raspberry pi, since we have already acquired the radar. This did not add extra time, since it can be done in parallel with many of the other tasks and does not have many dependencies.

As of now we are on schedule with our project, and plan to stay on track with our plans for the next few weeks.

Our project includes considerations for public health and safety concerns because of our use case. Our project is designed to help first responders stay safe by limiting the amount of time they are exposed in high danger areas. Our project also focuses on improving the efficiency and cost of search and rescue missions by using an mmWave radar. Currently the infrared sensor is more commonly used but can provide unclear results due to the flames. Since our radar would not get blocked by the waves from the fire, our project should allow for better human detection in fire, and thus help save more people.

By ayeshag, ago

Ayesha’s Status Report for 2/11

This week I worked on finishing our project proposal slides for our class presentations. Specifically I worked on helping redefine our user and design requirements so that there was a clear distinction from the user and technical perspective. This included refining the metrics we had discussed and creating valid explanations behind each one. For the remainder of this week, I took into account some of the feedback we received from the questioning portion of the proposal presentation and looked into potential ways to address them. This included looking into temperature sensors and seeing how feasible it would be to include that aspect post-MVP. This also included refining our testing plan by thinking about what materials would give us the best results – I found that using varying thicknesses and opacities would allow us to best test our radar detection model. I also did a bit more research on fire search and rescue missions, after receiving feedback to narrow our scope down a bit. The research was mainly to see if we could get our device close enough to a fire, without having it melt or malfunction. From what we had previously researched, it seems as though we can get close enough to the fire to properly run our radar detection, but in edge cases where the obstructions require a smaller radius, our device would not be able to go closer to detect. Lastly, I started planning my own schedule for the next few weeks since the Gantt chart was quite large and I couldn’t break down all of my tasks to the checkpoints I wanted. I did not make a formal Gantt chart but I listed what I want to do/what that would require, and the deadlines I would like to finish those by.

My progress is on schedule. Next week I plan to look into buying a domain and setting up a general web app framework for our project. I also plan to work with my group mates on the design slides.

By ayeshag, ago