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Team Status Report for 2/21/26

This week we had our Design Presentation including our changes from drones to rovers, and following discussions with E6 to clearly differentiate the scope of our use-case requirements. The result of our discussions was that the scope of our project is ‘outdoor search and converge,’ and for E6 it is ‘indoor search and return.’ We received advice from Professor Tamal Mukherjee on this matter and we are looking to communicate with E6 to prevent further overlap and component ordering.

This week we finalized our Hardware and Software systems architecture. We decided to implement our localization by triangulating three single-antenna UWBs for an anchor-less local coordinate system to fulfill our scalability reach requirement. We also decided to implement our convergence with the Marco-Polo method to find the vectors that minimize the rovers’ distance to the target. We have a single PDoA-enabled UWB as our backup plan, but the cost of $250 makes it a less favorable option and we are confident that distance minimization is a better fit for our project.

We put in our first orders for the hardware. While we are waiting for them, we began setting up our Raspberry Pi environments and started on our software modules in parallel. In the following week we are looking to make some decisions in testing environment while we build our rovers and and begin software implementation with sensors.

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Isaac’s Status Report for 2/21/26

This week we had Jacob’s design presentation so we prepared the slides together. Besides the Design Presentation, I worked mostly on researching parts and putting in the orders. Once they arrive, I will assemble them so that Jacob and Tyler can integrate them with the sensors and Pi setups. I also started writing Python code for motor movement, and that should be ready for Tyler’s Pi setup and Jacob’s sensor integration in the following week.

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Jacob’s Status Report for 2/21/26

This week was design presentation week, so I worked with the team to finish up the design presentation slides Sunday and then I gave the design review presentation on Monday. I’m currently waiting on hardware to arrive. Once in, I plan on testing the IR sensors and motor encoders and integrating them with the Raspberry Pi. If I have time, I will work with Tyler to figure out the UWB modules to test their communication and distance measurement.

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Tyler’s Status Report for 2/21/26

This week, I worked on setting up the raspi environment with settings and libraries. I chose to flash them with Ubuntu rather than RaspiOS to minimize overhead. I set up a system of running a python script upon booting up for the entry point of our system. I also wrote a python test script to test driving GPIO and I2C signals from python. I started writing some of the logic for space parametrization and segmentation, although I didn’t move it to run on the Pi’s yet. Next week we should be receiving the cars and UWB modules. I want to get basic measurements and comms over the UWB running next week.

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Jacob’s Status Report for 2/14/26

This week, I worked with the team to decide on how to proceed with the project as we switch from flying drones to ground-based rovers. This involved changing and updating use case, design requirements, and the task breakdown/timeline. I’ve worked on the rover design and tried to ensure that the parts we purchase will interface properly. Additionally, I have also been working on slides and preparing to give the Design Review presentation.

I am behind schedule and looking to make up ground next week. I need to do more design work with the recent change of plans. I hope that incorporation of feedback from the DR will help.

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Isaac’s Status Report for 2/14/26

This week, as we made the decision on switching our project from drones to rovers, I mainly focused on moving our hardware systems from air to ground. I have been looking for components, and one of the major decisions we made was choosing to use ultra wide band sensors and motor encoders for localization. I have been establishing SPI communications on the Pis.  I am also drafting some Kalman filters and Python wrappers. We are currently waiting for UWBs and rovers, so once we have them I will be able to test our setup and work on integration. I am slightly behind schedule as we are making big changes due to unexpected circumstances, but the general schematic remains fairly similar so the shift should not put us too behind once we have the components delivered.

 

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Team Status Report for 2/14/26

This week, we made a big change to our project. Due to new restrictions on purchasing drones and drone parts, we eventually concluded that using drones was not feasible. Drones that satisfied our requirements were either too expensive or were manufactured in places we could not order from. So, due to budget constraints, we transitioned to a land-based plan with rovers.

This change came with a lot of scrapping work from the last weeks and planning new hardware to order. Luckily, most of the changes were in the hardware, as our software designs can stay mostly the same regardless of vehicle type. We have decided on a rover kit to use for the vehicles, which will be much cheaper than drones per vehicle, likely allowing us to end up with a larger overall swarm. We’ve also made the choices for everything we need to order and will be placing orders next week. Delivery times for these parts are much shorter.

Our general software design plans are made, and we are ready to start implementing software onto our raspberry pi’s next week. Our next milestone is to have two pi’s communicate and agree on a coordinate space using uwb and each pi’s relative position.

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Tyler’s Status Report for 2/14/26

This week, due to our change in plans from drone swarm to rover swarm, I worked on transitioning our preexisting software plans to land-based plans, as well as making the actual control flow diagram for the software.

I separated the logic into an initialization phase, a wandering phase, and a target found/convergence phase. I broke each of these down into different individual actions and communication steps that need to happen as well as writing out descriptions for each step. These descriptions will help us with abstraction so we can focus on coding one task at a time. Descriptions will also help when explaining the control loop to classmates during the design presentation.

A big part of this week was spent researching trade-offs  between drones and rovers and hardware for each, eventually culminating in our decision to switch to rovers. Luckily, most of our communication protocols and algorithms were independent of the vehicles used, so we were able to keep most of what we already had planned.

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Jacob’s Status Report for 2/7/26

This week, I worked with the team on drone design. I worked on finding a frame, a power solution, and drone motors. Buying a frame is more time-effective than modeling and 3D printing one. We will use a 3S LiPo (11.1V) battery to power the motors and use a Buck converter to step the voltage down to 5V to supply the Raspberry Pi

I am still on schedule.

Next week, I should be planning more aspects of how the drone software might work.

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Isaac’s Status Report 2/7/26

This week I decided on the sensors we needed for our use case requirements. I searched for budget-friendly camera, gps and transceivers that match the specs we needed, mainly our weight requirements. I also decided on the optical flow sensor and the height sensor that can assist our photogrammetry processing.