This week, I first worked on setting up the magnetometer with Kevin. Even though we bought a HMC5883L, we actually received a QMC5883L, which is slightly different. We were able to find a GitHub repository that allowed us to set up the magnetometer and have it output the orientation of the person relatively well.
Next, we worked to integrate the entire system together. This mainly involved putting together two big parts, which was the pipeline to run the segmentation model -> generate 2D occupancy matrix -> path-planning -> haptic feedback with the pipeline that localizes the person using UWB sensors. The two pipelines are fully robust on their own, but we worked to update the person on the occupancy matrix using UWB sensors instead of mouse presses. This also involved communication between the Raspberry Pi which controls all the components on the belt with the processing node (in this case our laptop for now) which runs path planning on the occupancy matrix and sends the results back.
Alongside this, we also worked as a team to verify and validate our results. Some simple tests that we have done throughout the course of the semester was taking images with the camera and making sure it covers a 6×6 space, validated by markers on the ground. We chose a few rooms on campus to do this test. We tested our occupancy matrix generation by running the segmentation model on all these rooms and noting how well it segments the room into obstacles. Obstacles were definitely detected more than 90% of the time, and with our algorithm to create a conservative bound for obstacles it will definitely be unlikely for the user to collide into obstacles. False positives were also quite rare (when the model detects free space as obstacles), and only happens when there is a glare from the sun or something similar. We tested our entire pipeline by seeing if the person would walk into obstacles given the feedback from our haptic sensors on a variety of environments and configurations of obstacles set up.
Lastly, we also worked on the presentation slides concurrently as we have slides due next week.
Our progress might be slightly behind schedule as we are still waiting on a few components to arrive. We have 4 haptic vibrators, but we need 2 more to complete our system. We are also hanging our UWB sensors on the ceiling, but we would use stands in the real demo.
Next week, we hope to put our entire system together so that we can get ready for demo. We have most of the parts working together but not completely yet. We also hope to get started on final deliverables next week.
As I’ve designed, implemented, and debugged my project, I’ve learned that it is extremely crucial to do thorough research on the internet on what you are trying to implement rather than implementing it from scratch. I think the saying “don’t rebuild the wheel” really applies, because there are so many resources out there where people have already built the same things you are building. Even if it is not exactly the same, the knowledge I gain from that additional research is invaluable and could save me so much time. Using hardware components with clear documentation and a user forum will save me a lot of headache as these systems do not work out the box most times, and would require some debugging.
I also found it extremely useful to unit-test. Since our systems are huge, there could be so many moving parts and it would be difficult to isolate the error. Testing each part incrementally is extremely crucial to the entire implementation working.