The most significant risk right now would be the usage of the MEMS microphone. We have some concerns about how it may be difficult to triangulate well with our robot’s small form factor. We are planning on mitigating this risk by adding a directional microphone. Performing audio analysis on the MEMS requires careful and precise array design to have good accuracy. Using a directional microphone will help in identifying the general source of the audio and pairing that with an array of MEMS microphones will allow for better audio localization and recognition.
An array of three MEMS microphones are sufficient to perform a 2D plane triangulation along the X and Z axis of the robot head. Microphones will be placed on the back of the head, on the left and on the right. Performing signal analysis on the input from each microphone will allow us to identify the source of the audio with a margin of error of about 5 degrees.
We believe that this combination of changes to the microphone system would improve the accuracy of the system. As an additional layer of risk mitigation, we plan to reduce the activation distance of the audible cues. This will ensure that the microphones would be able to accurately pinpoint the location. To that end, our desired goal would be for the audible cues to activate once the student is at the desk, within 3 feet of the robot.
Based on the feedback, slight changes to the Gantt chart have been made to account for time to identify specific parts that we need to purchase for our robot. We looked at the purchasing pdf to prepare a purchase request form from the parts inventory and we are working on narrowing down the list of parts that we will need. This will help us have a clearer picture of exactly what components our robot will have and for what purpose.