Wrap up from Friday Meeting and New Tasks

Current Status:

Completed items

• Kill Switch
• GPS read
• Compass Read
• Accelerometer Read
• 1 axis gyro Read
• Single Way Point (Click on the map and the robot goes to that point based on GPS and Compass)

In Progress

• Wheel Encoders
• Integrate Accelerometer and Gyro
• Multiple Way points
• Read Sonar Sensor
• Read IR Sensor
• Collision Avoidance
• Color Cone Tracking
• USB based horn / signal lights

Tasks to Do:

• Allow a series of way points to be defined on the map and have the robot move to each one.
• Create new way points based on collision detection.
• Integrate wheel encoders into mapping.

Some preliminary things I would like to see are:

Sonar Sensor: Demonstrate that the robot can track an object (say a person walking in front of it) by chasing that person around.

Demonstrate the upgraded GPS with the current software

I would like to see a MODEL of the event loop that we will eventually use IE

1. Read GPS
2. Read Compass
3. Find how far we traveled based on encoders
4. Are we near a cone? If so go to 6
5. Set new speed and heading for the platform and go back to 1
6. Search for a cone.
7. If we find a cone, move to within 5 feet of it.
8. If we don't find a cone after 30 seconds go back to 1.

Think about the event loop in terms of the the difference in timing between GPS updates,encoder updates, sonar updates and compass updates. What are these data rates? How can we preserve as much information as possible?