The final week of the project is here! A lot of things have changed since the last blog post and a few changes to the overall plan have also been made.
Firstly, after the complications of last week with the webcam, this feature has been dropped due to the lack of time left in the project. If we get time after completing this week’s milestone, this may be re-visited to see what can be achieved.
Secondly, all things to do with the Hokuyo laser scanner have now been fixed and the driver has been complied on the Raspberry Pi. Furthermore, our ROS package has been updated to include more advanced obstacle avoidance functionality. Quite simply, if any object is detected within a 90 degree angle in front of the robot, it will rotate away from it. However, sometimes obstacles are present which cannot be seen by the laser and thus the bump sensor is used as a last resort to ensure that it never gets stuck. Well enough chat just see for yourself in this short video:
As a final goal for the end of the project, our aim is to incorporate the ROS navigation stack (http://www.ros.org/wiki/navigation) into our program. The end result of this would mean that our robot should be able to fully map a room and navigate around it in such a way that allows a user to select a location.