Month: April 2025

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?
This week, I worked on integrating and rendering 3D objects—such as glasses—on top of a human face using OpenGL. I aligned the 3D model with facial landmarks and refined the rendering pipeline to ensure the virtual object appears naturally overlaid in real time. This required deeper integration with face tracking data and improvements to pose stability and object placement.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?
I’m on schedule. However, GPU performance and integration continue to be a challenge—especially on the Jetson platform, where driver and shader issues have impacted rendering stability. Given that this is a prototype, I’ll be making compromises on some graphical fidelity and fallback features to prioritize real-time responsiveness and ensure the demo remains functional and stable.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?
Next week, I plan to:

• Finalize the alignment and positioning of the glasses overlay under varying head poses.

• Improve visual realism through better materials, transparency, and shading effects.

• Explore lightweight fallback rendering techniques to support more constrained GPU scenarios.

• Test the robustness of the pipeline under different motion and lighting conditions.

• If time permits, begin generalizing the overlay system to support additional 3D elements (e.g., hats or earrings).

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project?

I worked on testing my pose recognition UI, and making it more robust to noise generated from inaccuracy from OpenPose. I also worked on adding more UI components, for all the features that we want in the final product. I also worked on serial input to the arduino (part of camera rig), and mapped inputs from my gesture/location control to serial inputs to Anna’s camera rig.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

Behind schedule. I’ve integrated my part of the project with Anna’s, so now the application can control camera rig. However, I am behind trying to build the program on the Jetson.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

Continue refining the UI, and attempt to integrate Catherine’s part of the project.

What are the most significant risks that could jeopardize the success of the project? How are these risks being managed? What contingency plans are ready?

One major risk is the unreliability of gesture recognition, as OpenPose struggles with noise and time consistency. To address this, the team pivoted to a location-based input model, where users interact with virtual buttons by holding their hands in place. This approach improves reliability and user feedback, with potential refinements like additional smoothing filters if needed.

System integration is also behind schedule due to incomplete subsystems. While slack time allows for adjustments, delays in dependent components remain a risk. To mitigate this, the team is refining individual modules and may use mock data for parallel development if necessary.

Finally, GPU performance issues could affect real-time AR overlays. Ongoing shader optimizations prioritize stability and responsiveness, with fallback rendering techniques as a contingency if improvements are insufficient.

Were any changes made to the existing design of the system (requirements, block diagram, system spec, etc)? Why was this change necessary, what costs does the change incur, and how will these costs be mitigated going forward?

Gesture-based input has been replaced with a location-based system due to unreliable pose recognition. While this requires UI redesign and new logic for button-based interactions, it improves usability and consistency. The team is expediting this transition to ensure thorough testing before integration.

Another key change is a focus on GPU optimization after identifying shader inefficiencies. This delays secondary features like dynamic resolution scaling but ensures smooth AR performance. Efforts will continue to balance visual quality and efficiency.

The PCB didn’t exactly match the electrical components, especially the stepper motor driver being used. We had ordered a different kind of stepper motor to match our needs (being run for long periods of time), but it required an alternative design. So, we made new wire connections to be able to use the stepper motor.

Provide an updated schedule if changes have occurred.

This week, the team is refining motion tracking, improving GPU performance, and finalizing the new input system. Next week, focus will shift to full system integration, finalizing input event handling, and testing eye-tracking once the camera rig is ready. While integration is slightly behind, a clear plan is in place to stay on track. We will begin integrating the camera rig that is ready while the second one is being built.

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

I found a way to mount the camera rig securely. I also got started on building the 2nd camera rig.

I also got all four stepper motors to work.

Steven and I also integrated gesture recognition with the camera rig for two stepper motors. However, it shouldn’t be a problem for four stepper motors since the command is just a little different.

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be taken to catch up to the project schedule?

I am on track. I will finish building the 2nd camera rig this week so that I can get started on the UI.

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week?

I hope to finish my 2nd camera rig and work on the UI.