Diagnostic Station¶

Purpose: Design and build a station to test basic robot functions.

• Brainstorming
• Meeting notes

Functionality¶

• Functions To Be Tested
• Maintain a database of statistics for each each robot (automatically updated)
• Interactive mode/automatic mode
• Partial tests possible (e. g. only motors, or only rangefinder 3)

Equipment¶

• Dragonfly board
• Dynamos (encoders)
• IBOM
• Turntable
• Moving wall

Communication¶

• Station/Server communication

Further steps¶

• Test/Fix (2)
• Present (MoM) (5/6/09)

TODO¶

Bugs¶

• Sometimes, the encoder readings are all over the place. Note that the error is usually symmetric (e.g. encoder0 positive, encoder1 negative), so it may be a an error in transmission (?).

Station/Robot communication¶

• define a channel and a PAN (and use it on both the robot and the station)
• in robot.c:station_robot_receive: if an unhandled message is received (default: clause), signal an error (possibly: send a message via USB, turn the orbs red, wait 1 second). This should probably be a function error(char *message) or something like that.
• different group for commands and requests, maybe also for done/data
• add message type to reply packets so a reply to one packet will not be interpreted as reply to a different packet
• signal an error condition to the user if the robot receives an unknown command

Dump functions¶

• Handle timeouts
• Add functionality for resetting the encoders
• Add another mode to control hardware (e. g. robot motors)

Tests¶

Misc¶

• Implement simultaneous robot/server communication
  • e. g. stop
  • Periodic callback function (wl_do style)?

Possible Enhancements¶

Functionality¶

• Incorporate a charging station into the diagnostic station
• More measurements, see Functions To Be Tested
• Power robot from wall
• Add a calibration mode for BOM positions
• Comm test: packet loss rate (quality of the wireless link)
  encoders.
• LCD Feedback
• introduce wall_position_t etc.
• Add a maximum retry count for timeouts
• Encoder test: use the robot_set_motors_time function. This is not easy because we will need a longer timeout (depending on the value!)
• Encoder test: instead of waiting a fixed time after turning the motors off, wait until the wheels are not moving any more, using the station's