The most significant risks that can jeopardize the success of this project is the hardware stack. Since the Jetson is a budget computer, it has many compatibility issues with modules that were even created to be used with it. For example, the WaveShare IMX219-83 Stereo Camera was created to be used with the Jetson, but just for it to be detected on the Jetson I had to download multiple drivers (until I found the right spec) and configured port settings on the Jetson that were not explained on most tutorials. Since many of the hardware components are not widely used, there is a very small community of engineers who have used these products and could share their ideas. Thus, the tutorials online don’t usually capture the complexity of setting this up. Setting up the Jetson and the camera modules were supposed to be done within a few weeks, but we are already taking longer than that (due to Jetson being broken and now camera compatibility issues). We are managing these risks by having Charles focus on the software stack in parallel while Kevin and Talay make sure the hardware stack is ready. We are also using widely available tools for the software stack so that our programs are easy to debug and there is a programming community out there.
No changes were made to the existing design. One small change is that we are going to utilize more UWB sensors that require less setup as described in Kevin’s status report.