Colony

11.21.2008

• Topics
  • trac
    • Added breadcrumbs for navigation
    • Any additional features you would like to see?
  • robot hardware
    • encoders - why so many half-working robots?
  • Mapping - Meeting w/ George on 11/24
    • Book: Probabilistic Robotics - Thrun, Burgard, Fox
    • Possible Approaches
      • Expectation Maximization - use line segments, assign points to line (iteratively)
      • Probability Occupancy Grids (for creating map), Particle Filters (for localization)
    • Performing real-time calculations on the server
      • Look into shared memory and/or sockets in MATLAB and/or python

• Status Updates
  • Mapping - Chris, Abe
    • Produced from pushing robot around, sending data to server, running matlab function
    • Show picture, matlab plot -- need to make movie
    • Realtime plotting of position/rangefinders almost works (bug in receiving floats) -- Tudor
  • IR rangefinder testing (Nico)
    • Found a rough conversion factor for IR units to mm.
    • There is more than the usual error after 19cm from the robot
    • Add macro to library to convert linearized range data to mm
    • Check return codes
  • I2C Communication (Nolan, Tim, Abhinav, Casey)
    • Finally got something to work on bayboards--plan to extend functionality and printing out data
    • Still need to test on the chargeboards on the robot and make it talk with the processor on the robot
    • Many thanks to various Roboclub members for the help!
  • Scheduling (Evan)
    • XBee detection works
    • scheduling coming soon pending I2C
  • Lights/Orbs - Kevin
    • two possible solutions
      • Motors -> timer0, lights -> timer1
      • lights -> timer2 (w/ buzzer)
  • Recharging
    • Charge Boards - Emily, Austin
      • New inductors working
        • Charge regulation 'funky' - incorrect current detection
        • Need to get this working before testing charging at 500 mA
    • Charge Bays - Rich
      • Porting code to new charge bays
        • Use I2C for communication, not DIO
  • BOM covers - Jimmy
    • Will be built soon
  • Colonet - Ryan
    • Fixed some wireless bug(s)
    • Working on client-server communication (images)
  • Odometry - Justin, Bradley
    • Works for driving in reverse
    • Values drift to zero
    • Possible rounding problem