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Somya’s Status Report for 2/10/2024

What did you personally accomplish this week on the project? Give files or

photos that demonstrate your progress. Prove to the reader that you put sufficient

effort into the project over the course of the week (12+ hours).

This week I mainly researched the sensors we plan on using for the gloves. There were a number of factors to consider, including cost, durability, and sensitivity. I compiled a list of sensors from various research groups/previous capstone projects used for similar gesture recognition applications, and then pitched various ideas in one of our team meetings. We have decided to go with the traditional one flex sensor per finger approach to start, namely Spectra Symbol’s SpectraFlex sensors, which are an improved design that are lightweight, less thick, and aim to minimize drift (i.e. unexpected change in sensor output despite the input having returned to an initial state). 

 

Is your progress on schedule or behind? If you are behind, what actions will be

taken to catch up to the project schedule?

My progress is on schedule. 

 

What deliverables do you hope to complete in the next week? 

I plan on helping complete the slides for the upcoming Design Review proposal, as well as research more into how we plan on addressing sensitivity issues with the flex sensors, as this was mentioned in the feedback we received from our initial proposal. In addition, I would like to have our sensors ordered by the end of the week, as well as start thinking about the pinout of the sensors to the Arduino.

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Team Status Report for 2/10/2024

The major risk that we are facing right now is concerning quickly finalizing our design. Over the week, we hashed out exact details about what our product will look like including specific parts we are interested in ordering. This is a small risk because we are close to finalizing our design and intermediate prototypes. The risk will continue to be managed as we enter design week and 100% finalize design ideas and part ordering. There are minimal contingency plans as the plan is just to finalize our design. 

 

Instead of having the data processing unit be in a separate unit, we have decided to run our processing algorithms on a PC. The rationale behind this change is that having our device work in a self-contained manner (i.e. without the user needing to carry around their computer) is not a top priority of ours—our main goal is to show proof of concept of the gloves working. 

 

We also made some soft deadlines that we want to finalize by next week for the prototypes we have planned. Each prototype should be standalone and work, and each one builds on the last. Below are the details of each rapid prototype as well as when we anticipate finishing them.

 

  • RP 1 due March 20:
    • Phase1:
      • Create one glove, sensor detection is reliable, IMU data is gathered
      • Wired connection to laptop, data send directly to laptop where we can monitor sensor data
      • No speaker, no bluetooth
    • Phase 2:
      • Test Bluetooth capabilities and add battery, and create a glove that can transmit data through bluetooth
      • Maintain same performance as phase 1 glove if possible
    • Phase 3:
      • Train the ML model and finish the product 
      • Add speaker and haptic feedback
  • RP 2 due April 3:
    • Phase 1a:
      • Duplicate glove into second glove 
      • Figure out how to send both gloves information to laptop via bluetooth
    • Phase 1b:
      • Make PCB only if we are somewhat ahead of schedule
    • Phase 2:
      • More gathering of data and training
  • RP 3 due April 14:
    • Phase 1a:
      • Expand vocabulary
    • Phase 1b:
      • Experiment with making this a distributed system using some form of communication protocol (need to iron this out)