Jai Madisetty’s Status Report for 2/12

This week, I mainly worked on refining the details for our SAR robot. Specifically, I tried thinking about what components of our project we need for the robot itself, and also for testing the robot’s competency. We have ordered all base components so far (NVIDIA Jetson Xavier and Roomba); however, we still need an SD card and batteries. We also need to order a smoke machine and liquid smoke for testing. We have yet to figure out where exactly we will test this robot so as to not set off any fire alarms; our goal is to figure this out by next week. I am mainly responsible for the software-related aspects of this project, such as implementing SLAM and the A* search algorithm. This past week, I’ve been learning about CUDA as we plan to write fast, parallel code with the NVIDIA Jetson. I have also been looking into an unofficial Roomba sdk that we can use to control the Roomba. Due to the absence of supplies, I am a bit behind schedule. Once we’ve received batteries and an SD card, we can start looking more into the specifics of implementation. We plan to obtain these materials early next week, so we can put in some extra time to setup and get back on track. By next week, I hope to be able to get the Jetson interfacing with the Roomba and being able to control the robot via the Jetson.