This week, the team benefited from the lecture a lot, testing the raspberry pi (RaspPi) control the arduino LED, and using geany to do basic control on iRobot, which includes setting baud rate, switching modes (passive / safe), send serial packet (move forward / backward). The team reviewed the process and decided to program the irobot based on python, rasp pi and geany. The team achieved to use rasp pi’s terminal to perform those basic tasks and figured out the transformation from decimal to hex when it comes to the serial communication. The python library “pycreate2 library” specially for irobot has been installed to rasp pi.

The team would meet more often compared with the regular meeting time to shape the project better. By the next meeting, the team will research on the IR sensors on iRobot in order to manage to read the signal and command irobot based on the feedback somehow (eg. line follower sample project). We need to figure out if the irobot control enable the feedback loop system or it is simply for open loop.

 

This week we wrapped up some unfinished works to catch up to the schedule. This week we set up a more detailed schedule. From today’s meeting and possible another meeting on weekend, the team is going to achieve programming the iRobot using raspberry pi and laptop, then figuring out realizing the line following feature.

Possible resources see the following links:

Raspberry Pi Control iRobot

Raspberry Pi Setup Guide with Mac

 

This Monday we presented our proposal for the project. Here are the slides sample which show our motivation, existing robots, testing ideas and plan.

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Peer Reviews:

1. some thinks the goal is good, some thinks the scope too vague
2. clear structure & approach, great motivation
3. what is item search? capability? speed? path planning? many noise during communication?

After summarizing the reviews from our peers, we realize that, to make our study purpose steady and convincing, we need to specify the project objective, like narrowing down the scope and functions. In this case we are more likely to focus on the deep-level questions.

Another after-thought is about the sensors pre-testing. It is very important to test the scope of IR sensors, like range, speed, functionality, etc. As for the communication between robot and the tablet, the range limit and maybe the information passing efficiency should be tested.