AutoRef Honors2019 minutes

AutoRef Honors 2019 Navigation

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1. Main

2. Timeline logs/thought process

3. Software Architecture

4. Vision

5. Simulation

6. Conclusion + Future goals

AutoRef Honors 2019

Minutes

09-10-2019

Global course of activities:

• Assembly of the drone,
• Installing required software
• Discussing the initial planning
• Trial and error up to ability to steer with controller
• Setting up the hover function on the drone

Division of workforce

• Drone flying: Jake and Joyce
• Imagery: Wolff and Alvaro
• Group management: Wolff

Action points

• Jake and Joyce: getting a further understanding of the software and making a start with computer controlled flying (python).
• Wolff and Alvaro: each researching 5 camera’s for on the drone and giving a summary of the specs.
• Wolff: redefine the overall planning, set up a doodle for a second weekly meeting

Focus points

• Thinking about the end goal and intermediate goals, then think about the most favorable approach to tackle these goals (approach meant as for instance difference between following the ball or following a robot).
• Defining the constraints and requirements to reach the goals.
• Setting specific goals to present progress.

16-10-2019

Subjects of discussion

• Selecting the camera for on the drone
• Flight time
• Sensors on the drone
• Setting up the wiki page
• Setting up Github for code
• Making a better planning

Camera Specs to look for when selecting camera are resolution, size weight, frame rate and consitency of frame rate. Also make some simple make calculations to for instance defend the chosen resolution. The communication and power supply of the camera should also be invested.

Flight time and sensors For the flight time there are decisions to be made concerning the size of the drone and weight of the compartments. Another thing to focus on is being able to access the data from the sensors on the drone within the python code.

Setting up the wiki page The wiki page can be personalized to show our progress, goals and other importand things. An idea for a page was a videolog showing the progression. There were some problems setting up the page but the syntax can be found on google.

Improving the planning For the planning it is first important to think about how to approach the problem of making a drone referee, for doing this it is also good to think about which football rules are good to implement. After having a general idea of this approach, it can be split into smaller goals which can be set for certain dates. For showing the progress of the project it is useful to have evaluations where the team gives shows, this also helps in setting very specific goals such as for this date we want to have the drone fly a specific script.

23-10-2019

Subjects of discussion

• Decision of following the ball with the drone
• Usage of potential field
• Giving commands to drone from computer in real time
• Selection of the camera
• Personal development plan deadline next Friday
• Giving a presentation of at 31-10-2019

Following the ball The endgoal of having the drone autonomously follow the ball has been split in a lot of subgoals divided itnto primary, secondary and final goals. The further away the subgoal is the less detailed the goal is defined because of the needed knowledge to further define the later goals has to be gathered during the earlier goals. For the subgoals in line of trajactory planning the hint was given to look at literature for optimal movements, and usage of potential field for the imagery.

Computer commands in real time Since last meeting the newest achievement in the drone movement is that the drone can now be instructed elementary tasks in flight from the comlputer. Before last meeting only prewritten script movements and movements from the Playstation controller were possible.

Selection of the camera A camera has yet to be selected, the difference between TVL and MP resolutions has been investigated and the conclusion is that a 600 TVL camera would be sufficiently sharp, the TVL will most likely automatically be converted to pixels when streaming the imagery to the computer. The latter is of importance for drawing conclusions from the imagery.

Personal development plan Next Friday will be the deadline for writing the draft of the PDP. The contents of such a PDP have shortly been discussed, in light of personal development it has been proposed that Alvaro will take get more involved in the planning, and that Wolff will be involved in giving presentations and will start writing the agenda's for each weekly meeting.

Progression presentation The presentation has been planned for 31-10-2019, in this presentation there will be shed light on the project developments, the planning for the rest of the planning, and there will be a short show of the drone. After the presentation there will be time to discuss the progressions.

30-10-2019

Global course of activities:

• Camera choice
• Desired drone size
• Accessing drone sensors from python
• Communication between referee, teams and robots during a match
• Updating planning

Camera choice The camera has been chosen and ordered in combination with the receiver. We might replace the camera when we expand the drone, we have yet to specify what size the drone should be expanded to.

Accessing drone sensors from python The sensors on the drone can now be accessed from the code.

Communication between referee, teams and robots during a match The referee is the only one who can give signals to the robots during a match, so the developers have no input whatsoever.

Updating planning In light of the PDP's, Alvaro will get the task of making and updating plannings from now on.

6-11-1019

Global course of activities

• Walking through the improvements we can make on the goals and requirements
• Making a planning for the second quarter

Improvements on goals and requirements During the previous progression presentation we discovered some weaknesses in our goals and requirements up to now. We made a list of these points that could be improved by going through the slides of the presentation. The biggest issues were to better define what exactly is required to reach each goal.

Planning for second quarter Once the goals have been updated we can now make a more detailed planning for the second quarter. The next progress presentation will be given in about four weeks.

13-11-2019

Global course of activities

• Readability of the code
• Code for testing without drone
• Steering the drone using keys
• Thinking about the eventual aim of the drone referee project

Readability Jake worked on making the code more readable and made a division for the code parts. Jordy mentioned that it would be useful to make a schematic picture of the code division for overview.

Test code Jake made a code that would simulate the drones actions and print what the drone would do. So now the drone does not need to fly to test new things.

Steering the drone using keys The plan is to make a code to be able to use the keyboard as if it were a ps3 controller.

20-11-2019

Global course of activities

• Ball tracking using phone camera or the nano camera
• Weight capacity of the drone
• Discussing the camera quality
• Discussing the expansion options

Ball tracking Alvaro made a code to track the ball, but Jake found one online that turned out to work better. The code works with color, so we found out that it works good using the phone camera, but when we attach the bought camera then the color is inconsistent and the code does not work.

Weight capacity of the drone We tested the lifting abilities of the drone, but it could not fly stable while lifting a 7g battery. So to be able to add a battery and a camera to the drone we will need to expand it.

Camera quality We did some tests with the camera, the color range is too bad to do image processing. The problem does not lie in the transmission since the color also flickers when the camera is right next to the receiver. So we will have to buy a camera with better color range.

Drone expansion We should get some options for expanding the drone to carry more weight and have a better flight time.