Up to this point, we have finished all of our major subsystems including person tracking through yolo model, obstacle detection and avoidance through ultrasonic sensors, and the integration of them. Therefore, the only risk right now is whether we can successfully assemble the robot to make it robust and easy to use, as described by our use case requirements. We ordered multiple components last week for the assembly of the robot, and although most have arrived, the major component, pipes, has yet to arrive. Therefore, the risk would be whether those pipes are reliable enough for us to finish building a robust robot as planned. To mitigate the risk, we tried to plan ahead what may not go as expected since there is only little time left before final demo, and we may need to order anything that we may need soon. We decided that one risk was the previously ordered pipes would be too long and we don’t have the proper tools to cut them, so we ordered two backup pipes that are shorter (~0.6m) but can still reach around 1m height after counting the height of the robot base. They will also arrive next week, leaving us plenty of time to assemble.
We didn’t make any change to our system, as everything goes as intended. We were able to do exactly what we planned in our system: a yolo model for person following, and an obstacle avoidance using three ultrasonic sensors. The only minor change was that we initially planned to use serial connection to connect raspberry pi with the robot base and enable their communication, but we figured that the serial connection somehow did not work. Therefore, we switched to http communication: we let the raspberry pi to connect to the robot’s hotspot, and send motor control commands through http requests. This turns out to work well and resolves the serial connection problem.
Overall, we are perfectly on schedule as we have finished the implementation of all major subsystems and finished the integration as planned. We hope to continue our work and assemble the robot next week to prepare for the final demo.