The first two days of the project are now complete and there a few things to report!
Firstly in terms of the hardware set-up, some plans have been laid out for the creation of a platform, on which the devices will all sit and allow the raspberry pi to be hidden along with the battery pack and other various wires. Hopefully this should be complete within the next day! Also, the pursuit for a USB hub has begun, due to the fact that we require three USB slots and the Pi only has two on it.
Next, some progress is being made with the raspberry pi installation, with the operating system already up and running and ROS is currently being compiled onto the device. Once again, this is an essential step for the project and needs to be done ASAP, so that some work can be done on the Pi itself. Furthermore, the wireless network has been set-up under the name “RoboPi” after the wireless device drivers were sorted. Once ROS has been fully installed onto the Pi, this stage of the first week is pretty much complete!
Finally, some progress has been made too do with combining Roomba and ROS. The correct ROS package was found for our version of the Roomba and basic communication was established with the robot itself, including simple movements. Some issues occurred to do with this due to a faulty wire but once found was quickly replaced. This basic functionality can be seen on the video below!
The plan for the rest of the week is as follows:
- Finish installing ROS on the Pi and set-up the wireless network ready for the distributed system.
- Create a ROS package with basic functionality for the Roomba (i.e. when roomba hits an object, turn at a random angle, go forwards and repeat)
Overall we are happy with the progress so far and are well on the way to meeting our milestone for this week.