Mouse Droid Blog

This week's progress focused on planning for upcoming transfer and integration of our current developed code into the Raspberry Pi (and ultimately the resulting functioning Mouse Droid). Our current simulated state is running smoothly, with implemented LiDAR testing positively on a generic simulated environment. The upcoming issues arise from the translation from a simulated environment into a physical one. We have a scheduled meeting with the Mechanical/Electrical team 1/31, where we will hopefully be able to assess their current stage of development as well (ie. ordered parts, motor types, etc.) Total hours logged for this week: 12 hours.

This week's progress consisted mostly of researching, debugging, and troubleshooting as we work on developing our Gazebo "world" and implementing the Mouse Droid's LiDAR system. We also had to re-vamp our GitHub repo due to some unforeseen translation issues between versions, and our README file is now updated to help ease the initial boot process. Both of these developmental stages are underway. We were able to secure the floor plan for the Engineering building, which is in the process of being replicated as a Gazebo world. This upcoming week will be spent completing the Gazebo environment and LiDAR system.  Total hours logged for this week: 12 hours. Below are images and videos documenting our progress: Fig 1. Updated Github | Simple world attempt Fig 2. Engineering Building Floor Plan (1st floor) Fig 3. Updated README  Fig 4. Current status of Articulated Robotics Playlist

This week's progress continued the work left off before winter break, focusing on implementing Ackermann Steering as a "black box" function instead of simulating each individual mechanical component. This has been completed using both a Gazebo plugin and Ros2 Ackermann controller, detailed below. We now have a functional drivable car that moves in accordance with the mechanics and limitations of the real Mouse Droid bot. During the upcoming week we aim to begin development on the Gazebo environment and implementation of the LiDAR system.  The total hours logged for this week: 12 hours. Below are images and videos documenting our progress: Fig 1. Ackermann Steering Ros2 controller  Fig 2. Current state of bot Fig 3. Resource for implementing LiDAR