Personal tasks of this week:
Task: Proposal Presentation
Definition: As the presenter, prepare for the proposal presentation by drafting up the content to present, making presentation slides, writing a script, and rehearsing. Finally, present the proposal to our section.
Completion: The task was completed. It was done together with my teammates, who were especially helpful in giving me useful feedback when I rehearsed. Our TA Aidan also gave me very constrictive feedback on my presentation. The presentation slides can be found here: http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece500/projects/s24-teamd6/proposal/
Task: Project Management
Definition: As the team’s Project Manager of the week, keep track of the progress of the project, ensure that everyone is aware of and capable of completing their tasks, organize meetings and work sessions, and communicate with instructors and TAs on behalf of the team when necessary.
Completion: The task was partially completed. I was effective in manually tracking progress and organizing work sessions, but I did not set up a more easy-to-use project management tool (like a GitHub Project) as planned. I will work on better utilizing the available tools when I take up PM duties next time.
Task: Symbolic Model Development
Definition: Work with Alvin to develop a symbolic dynamics model of an inverted double pendulum, which would be the basis of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC).
Completion: The task is completed. Alvin and I made substantial progress in deriving the dynamics equations and coding up the simulation using CasADi, an automatic differentiation library. A visualization of the simulated double pendulum with an external torque applied can be found in Alvin’s update for this week.
Overall progress assessment:
My progress is on-schedule, as all of my tasks this week have been completed. I will continue working towards completing Prototype 1, which is swinging up the inverted double pendulum with NMPC in a simulation.