Mouse Droid Blog

The week's progress focused on finishing the setup on the desktop provided to us by Dr. Van Haaster. As previously mentioned, a key issue we faced for our setup was a lack of working WiFi connection, this was fixed and the PC is now setup for what we currently need. Additionally, we connected the code that we got through following the video playlist to our Github repository for the project, allowing us to work along the videos on our laptops or home PC's, with testing being done by the PC on campus. The groups total hours for the week is: 18 hours. Below are screenshots related to the various tasks we did during this week. Fig. 1 Video the group watched from the main playlist Fig.2 Video screenshot showcasing an obstacle course Fig. 3 Screenshot from a file on our repository

This week's progress was a continuation of the previous week's research in preparation for the Midterm Exam. Each member of the team was responsible for research, memorization, and hypothetical application of their algorithm to a specific problem related to the project. ROS2 installation on the PC is still underway, working through issues with Wi-Fi connection. Due to the nature of the research and the fact that the scheduled Wednesday meeting was set aside for the actual Midterm Exam, the total hours logged for the team this week was: 16 hours. Below are screenshots and photos documenting what was accomplished this week. Fig 1-4 document the algorithms chosen by the team to present for their midterms.  Fig 1. Otsu's Method. This algorithm is used to determine the perceived pixels into   two categories: foreground and background. Fig 2. Watershed Algorithm. Similar to Otsu's method, this algorithm is an integral part of    the image segmentation process, which will come

This week's progress consisted mainly of algorithm research to prepare for the upcoming Midterm Exam and gain an altogether better understanding of the various algorithms required for full functionality of the Mouse Droid. A team task hub was created using Notion to aid in Agile Sprint Management, organization, and delegation of tasks. Now that Linux is setup and running on the team desktop, ROS2 installation is underway on both the desktop and the R-Pi4.  The total hours logged this week for the team was: 19 hours. Below are screenshots and photos documenting what was accomplished this week. Fig 1. Current obstacle with Ubuntu MATE: getting the Wifi dongle and/or LAN cable connection to work with Ubuntu  Fig 2. An example of an algorithm (Otsu's Method) found during research that will be relevant to the functionality of the project. Here, Otsu's method is used to determine perceived pixels into two categories: foreground and background.  This algorithm, as well as others f

This week's progress consisted mainly of software and OS setup on acquired hardware (Raspberry Pi 4 and designated school desktop computer). ROS and 3D Mapping algorithm research is still ongoing, so to optimize group efforts as the weeks continue.  The total hours logged this week for the team was: 28.5 hours. Below are screenshots and photos documenting what was accomplished this week.  Fig 1. Successfully running/updating the Raspberry Pi 4  We have access to two other Raspberry Pis as well, but they are both Raspberry Pi 3s, so we decided to continue installations on the RPi 4 only. The other two Pis will be kept as backups, and can potentially be used if we needed more computational power for droid functions down the line.  Fig 2. Securing and setting up provided school desktop PC. At this point we ran into  issues with admin privileges, and required extra help from RON (?) Fig 3. Once privileges were acquired, we were able to partition disk space to run  both Windows and Linu

This week's progress consisted primarily of researching robotic simulation/visualization software, establishing required project documents and documentation, and troubleshooting tutorials for ROS. The total hours logged this week for the team was: 28 hours. Below are screenshots and photos documenting what was accomplished this week.  Fig 1. YouTube tutorial playlist | ROS and Raspberry Pi This YouTube playlist was found/assigned to the CS team by an ECE Mouse Droid teammate. The videos by Articulated Robots provide a tutorial on how to create a simulated mapping robot using ROS and a Linux machine.  Upon following these tutorials, we came to the conclusion that attempting the same steps on a Linux Virtual Machine was far too taxing for our personal computers to handle. A single school computer is in the process of being made accessible to us for this purpose.  Fig 2. Screenshot from (failed) attempt to download/run a version of ROS on Windows Fig 3. Research on ROS Alternatives (R