Month

August 2015
25
Aug

Fully Modular Robot!

Our team 3D design expert Matthew designed the new chassis for the robot, and then after a discussion with myself and Mr Elias, began to create a locking mechanism that would allow for a fully modular robot. One of the prototypes pictured above is a double-locking system with two stages of security. The first is...
Read More
24
Aug

OpenCV

The team met for the first time since Robocup, but with OpenCV installed and working, we began to make some actual progress. Before we start describing that, it’s important to note that we now have an easy way to transfer files to and from the Pi without the need for a USB mass storage device....
Read More
21
Aug

RoboCup Regionals

Robocup Regionals! I took the robot home overnight to install the necessary packages such as NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, OpenCV and ffmpeg. On the day, we got off to a great start, being super prepared with a fully functioning robot – we wish.  There’s still a whole bunch of stuff we needed to do – and...
Read More
19
Aug

Streaming? Kinda. Not Really.

Using the camera mounted cleverly by Matthew’s camera mount apparatus, I took a collection of test photographs and determined that the image must be flipped vertically and horizontally to perfectly represent what the robot is looking at. The piece of paper in the image above was placed under the right side of the robot, so...
Read More
18
Aug

Still No Streaming. (We’re Working On It Though)

Matthew worked on designing a static camera mount for the Pi Camera, which will face down at the ground in order to make line following more efficient.  We plan to have 2 cameras on the robot, one for line following and another that will stream to a remote machine – however, we still haven’t found...
Read More
17
Aug

Streaming? No.

After having more trouble with the camera on a new Raspberry Pi, I worked on updating the firmware of said Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is currently fetching its latest package list. Once that is complete, the latest version of PiCamera will be installed so we can start working out where the camera should be...
Read More
12
Aug

Redesign!

Matthew finished designing the new and improved robot chassis, with some inputs from myself and Ryan.  It will measure about 25cm wide when the servos and wheels are fully mounted.  As of yet we have no idea exactly how high it will be, however we are comfortable with the fact that it will probably fit...
Read More
06
Aug

Ghetto-bot ROLL OUT!

We finally got the robot back in our hands. Today is our first day pulling apart the robot and its arm, and to say the least, it looks like something out of the ‘hood’. The whole camera assembly was being held on by zip ties and duct tape – some redesigns on the assembly might...
Read More