The most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project are the object detection algorithm’s latency and the toy race car’s speed. The object detection algorithm is currently taking around 1 second to product the initial bounding box of the car for the tracking algorithm to use as its input, and this is a problem because we have 4 cameras that each cover a region of the track and they need to be able to get a bounding box on the car from the object detection algorithm anytime the car initially enters the region of the track they are responsible for. We are working on managing this risk by identifying faster alternatives for the object detection algorithm we are currently using. The toy race car currently travels at about 1.5 m/s and can go no slower without starting and stopping, and this is a problem because we’re not sure if the cameras will be able to track the car if it goes this fast past the camera, whether because the tracking algorithm can’t keep up, the motor positional feedback control can’t keep up, or the motor itself can’t keep up. We are working on managing this risk by testing out the maximum turning speed of our camera servos and whether that can keep up with a fast moving object at various distances from the track. We are working on a contingency plan for this risk by slowing down the car using weights, and will be testing out taping coins to the top of the car to slow it down.
No changes were made yet to the existing design of the system but the object detection algorithm may change in order to provide a faster initial object detection time in order to meet our system’s latency requirements. This change incurs some extra time working on the object detection before other parts of the project such as auto-tracking and auto-switching can move forward, and these costs will be mitigated moving forward by all team members pitching in to help.
An updated schedule pushes our system integration back a week as we are still working on Arduino interaction and interfacing in CV.
We have gotten our first steps working: object detection of the toy car, tracking of cars in video files, simultaneous control of the 4 servos, and switching between the 4 camera sources. Now we need to improve these parts to meet our project requirements then put these parts together.