‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I’d like to slightly modify that statement to ‘Any solution to a technology problem that works for an inexplicable reason is indistinguishable from magic’. Here’s why: The S.A.R.T. recently acquired a pair of stereoscopic cameras for use in creating a 3D model of the environment, complete with...Read More

One of the requirements for the Major competition is to generate a top-down floor plan of the room in which the test takes place. Ideally, this would happen automatically, however until we get that working we can use the exported 3D model created by the ZED Mini and a bit of post-processing in Blender to...Read More

Here’s how we got our Jetson Nano working reliably with an Intel Wireless AC 3165 PCIe WiFi card. This post outlines the steps someone else used to solve this issue on the Nvidia developer forums, but the solution was spread over multiple posts whereas this one puts all those steps in one place.  Depending on...Read More

It was July of 2016, and by our rough calculations we had about twelve months to develop a reliable robot for the competition the next year in Nagoya, Japan.  We briefly discussed developing the robot out of a new material, CPE which boasted a high degree of resistance to heat and chemicals.  While the competition...Read More

Alex had returned from China with a plethora of ideas for potential improvements to the platform we were developing on, including both the hardware and software side of the robot. Ryan and Jack began working on what would eventually become hazmat sign detection, however at this stage it was basic colour and edge detection, while...Read More

Greetings, everyone.  It’s been a while since I wrote a blog, I don’t think I’ve posted a blog since I became a member of the esteemed club known as the S.A.R.T. Alumni. I thought, with the introduction of a generation of new members, I’d take a look back on where we’ve come from – a...Read More

While there are other blog posts that go into detail about each day at Robocup 2017 (see here), this blog is a more in-depth look back at our experiences during and after the competition.   The S.A.R.T. at Robocup 2017, Nagoya I’ve compiled a video of some footage of our robot during the competition, navigating...Read More

I uploaded all the robot’s design files and some renders I made of the mocked up internals in Sketchup. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2430783   In other news, the filament we ordered didn’t arrive (again), so we used some spare red ultimaker filament to print the lid, and we’re starting to put the components in the robot’s chassis.  It’s...Read More

Today I used one of the prototype chassis to measure the length of each belt.  I attached the servos and wheels, and then used string to find the exact length the belts needed to be. I cut the string and measured the length (or circumference, as the belts would be designed as a circle) and...Read More

After exams had concluded, I started working on modifying the current robot design to accommodate the concepts that Jack and Aaron came up with a few weeks ago. The modifications were: Shrink both sides of the robot chassis which reduced the overall length.  The length went from 251 to 226mm – the minimum amount of...Read More