Today’s pool test marked several major milestones. This was the first time that our new minibot, named Crush, was submerged in the pool. This was also the first time that we tested the torpedo launcher in the pool. And it was also the first time that all code migrated to ROS2 was tested together, in …
Today, we tested the new offboard comms pyserial method for communicating with the thrusters, alongside using two arduinos on the robot instead of the original three. After some trial and error, we had to revert to an earlier commit of the code where the start flag for serial communication is a single byte (0xFF), instead …
Today, in our last pool test of the summer, we completed the gate and buoy tasks in one continuous run. We started with the gate task: submerge, correct yaw for the coin flip, move through the gate, and finally barrel roll. We put the gate in the water in the opposite direction from our previous …
Today we resolved the thruster issue and made more progress towards the gate task. Max and I recently improved our detection rate on the DepthAI camera with color correction to 17Hz and also reduced the latency. This was the result of two optimizations At the pool, we first tested our gate model on the DepthAI …
Today we ran into several issues with the thrusters. Over the last few days, Lilly and I swapped the thruster Arduino from a Nano Every to a Nano with the hope that it would fix the disconnect issues we’ve been having. We also swapped the bottom mono camera for a new one. We had to …
We made more progress towards the gate task. Moving Towards the Gate While the robot is able to move towards the gate in most cases, sometimes, the robot would move too far in the Y direction when it first started moving. Its goal would be to align itself with the red image, but it would …
Today we made significant progress towards completing the gate task. As DepthAI color correction is still a work in progress, we temporarily added a YOLOv7 package to onboard to run our gate model on the main computer and perform detections on the front mono camera’s feed. This had a detection rate of 2.66 Hz, which …
We completed the buoy task. We started by first narrowing the range values used for HSV filtering to avoid picking up on gray and orange-red objects and to instead limit it to just saturated red colors. This significantly reduced false positives. The final CV algorithm can detect the buoy when it is within 5 meters …
Today we finished developing a robust buoy detection algorithm, primarily using HSV filtering and contour matching. Here’s the high-level overview of the process: This has been proven to be a robust and reliable way to detect the buoy, whilst filtering out false positives and avoiding false negatives. We also began to write the task planning …
Today we completed the code to accomplish the barrel roll part of the gate task. Here’s the working sequence: The robot drifts a little in X and Y throughout this process. Roughly, a 2m x 2m area around the robot needs to be clear to avoid running into a wall. With this sequence, the robot …
Since the prequal has been completed, our focus has shifted to completing at least one competition task before we leave. This would be either the gate or the buoy. On days that we’re able to get two lanes, we’ll focus on the gate task. Otherwise, we’ll focus on the buoy task. Today, our main goals …
PREQUAL COMPLETE! Today we completed the prequal. We used the same strategy as outlined in the previous update, but with two important changes: Thus, the robot followed the lane line to the marker, dead reckoned around the marker, and followed the lane line on the way back. This proved to be a reliable, repeatable way …
This update covers three pool tests, held on the following dates: These pool tests have been entirely focused on completing the prequal. We initially picked up where we left off with regards to our prequal strategy: This strategy quickly proved to be difficult to execute because of the following issues Given these issues, we switched …
Today we had the first pool test of the summer! Over the past two weeks, we accomplished the following: At the pool test, we adjusted the buoyancy, static power, and performed some basic motion tests. Adjusting buoyancy was a breeze with the new adjustable buoyancy system. However, one of the buoyancy mounts broke during this …
This is our last pool test of the semester. We spent the first half of the pool test testing out a few different issues with our robot: Our main goal for the second half of the pool test was to complete the prequal. We first used dead reckoning for both going around the marker and …
Today our goal was to try to complete the prequal by any means necessary. While we didn’t complete the prequal, we’ve made quite a bit of progress towards this goal. We picked up from where we left off yesterday, which was to try to keep the robot level whilst moving forward, especially when tracking a …
We attached a much wider base to the marker, which allowed it much more stable when standing up in the pool. We setup the prequal course. We’ve put small pieces of tape near the edge of the pool at three points: robot starting position, gate position, and marker position. We adjusted buoyancy and retuned static …
We remapped the joystick inputs and it now works as expected. We tested all 6 axes, including roll and pitch. Like Will, we noticed Foxglove becoming unresponsive if multiple windows are open. We noticed that the Foxglove bridge node was reporting that the send buffer limit has been reached which is the most likely cause …
Before the test: Last night, Philip finished wiring the Ping1D. Today morning, we discovered that the epoxy applied to the battery connector had gotten into the connection, causing the connector to be very tightly connected with the wall power connector. We couldn’t separate them with brute force, so Philip cut off part of the insulation. …
We added Duke Robotics Club labels to the chairs, table, and monitor. We swapped out the HDMI cable for our pool monitor since we were having problems with the old one. We recorded a 10 minute (~10,000 frames) underwater video of the pool from the front DAI camera. This will be used as null images …
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