Team Status Report for 10/5

This week we had our design review presentations, and were presenting as well as giving feedback. It was nice to be able to see the progression of everyone’s projects, and we took note of good things that other teams did, such as having very specific risk mitigation plans per use case requirement and being very detailed in scheduling and project management. 

Besides the presentations and feedback, we started to split off into each of our own sections and continued work for that. For Gordon’s KRIA portion, a few parts ordered from last week arrived, and work was done to verify that they connected and worked well. Research was done to confirm more about exactly how each part would be used, confirming details with Varun as well. Extensively searched around HH 1300 wing for a previously existing display port to display port cable, but couldn’t find it and a new one was ordered. Unfortunately couldn’t do the desired testing due to the missing part, opted to do more research into how setup would work and what can be done as soon as the part arrives. 

The camera also arrived so Jimmy was able to get the DepthAI python API set up and running with a simple object detection model. Jimmy was also able to get the custom ball detection model running on the webcam. One risk that arose as part of experimenting with the camera was that the object detection model may not be able to track the ball fast enough with the simple object detection model that was used. However, we are training a better model specifically to detect ping pong balls, and can also use a higher contrast colours between the ping pong ball (bright orange) and the background (solid white or black colour). There also may be promising results once the model is loaded onto the camera rather than experimenting with a laptop webcam.

Regarding the physical portion of this project, Josiah created and completed a team Bill of Materials document, and placed an order for the majority of the components necessary to begin construction of the XY robot. A few parts will need to be 3D printed, but the STL files are readily available for download, which will expedite the process. These components should arrive quickly, being ordered over Amazon Prime, and so construction should begin swiftly. Porting over the controls from the Arduino to the KRIA may prove tricky, as the design calls for a CNC shield over the arduino for stepper motor control. I will need to look into whether the KRIA supports CNC-esque controls, and if not, a proper communication protocol between the devices, such as UART. Realistically, only a single packet of data will need to be sent at a time: the location the robot must move to (aka, projected landing location of the ball).