Raymond Xiao’s status report for 03/19/2022

This week, I focused on reading the iRobot Create 2 specification manual that gives more information on how to program the robot. I also looked more into a GitHub repository that has a package specifically for interfacing with the Create 2 (link: https://pypi.org/project/pycreate2/) through USB. I wrote some test code using this library on my local machine and managed to get the robot to move in a simple sequence. For example, to move the robot forward, a series of four data bytes are sent. The first two bytes specify the velocity while the last two bytes specify the turning radius. To drive forward at 100mm/s, send 100 as two bytes and then send 0x7FFF as the radius bytes.  In terms of scheduling, I think I am on track. For this upcoming week, I plan to have code that will be able to also interact with the Roomba’s sensors since that will be necessary for other parts of the design (such as path planning).