What I Personally Accomplished This Week
This week I focused on validating the navigation with actual robot motion by acquiring and integrating an Elegoo Smart Robot Car as a testing platform. I purchased and assembled the Elegoo chassis to enable immediate testing without waiting for our final mechanical design. The assembly involved mounting components, connecting the TB6612FNG motor driver, and wiring the Arduino UNO for motor control.
Worked on connecting Nav2’s velocity commands to the Arduino controlled motors. This required writing a ROS2 node that converts Nav2’s /cmd_vel messages into serial commands sent to the Arduino over USB. Testing revealed an issue where Nav2 publishes only angular velocity commands with no forward linear velocity. I traced this to a coordinate frame mismatch between the odometry data and Nav2’s expectations. I also completed the required ethics module assignment. I also worked with the team on soldering connections for the motor driver power lines and sensor wiring, ensuring reliable electrical connections for sustained testing sessions.
Progress Status
Progress remains on track with the project timeline. The Week 7 deliverable for motor integration has been achieved with the Elegoo test platform responding to Nav2 commands.
Deliverables for Next Week
I will begin implementing the behavioral finite state machine for operational mode transitions and establish the TCP socket receiver on the Raspberry Pi to accept human detection data from the KR260. These deliverables will complete the navigation subsystem and enable full system integration testing in Week 8.