This week, we focused on preparing for the interim demo, including creating slides and recording demonstration videos for both the vision pipeline and system behavior. We worked together to ensure the presentation clearly shows the current progress of the system and highlights key components such as perception and control. In addition, we collaboratively developed and tested the JSON command interface used to control the robot, which is an important step toward integrating the software pipeline with the robot base.
We also attempted to perform more extensive hardware testing, including evaluating the robot’s speed and responsiveness. However, testing was limited due to the robot battery running out, which prevented us from completing all planned experiments. As a result, we are slightly behind schedule on hardware validation. Despite this, we believe the delay is manageable and plan to continue testing early next week once the battery issue is resolved, allowing us to quickly catch up on integration and performance evaluation.
Additional section: For validation of the overall system, we are planning end-to-end tests where the robot follows a user in realistic indoor environments. These tests will evaluate whether the system meets key use-case requirements such as maintaining a safe following distance, responding to obstacles, and operating smoothly in multi-person scenarios. We will measure following distance over time, observe whether the robot can correctly track the intended user, and verify that the emergency stop logic works reliably when obstacles are detected. In addition, we will test system behavior under edge cases such as occlusion or sudden direction changes. The results will be analyzed by comparing measured performance, such as distance error and response time, against our design requirements. These tests ensure that the integrated system behaves as intended and meets the overall project goals.