Meeting Notes for 3/30

Discussed mechanical design

• Make sure we have long enough Bosch rail in the lab for the 4' rails
• Kinect
  • Should have about +/- 1 radian vertical field of view
  • Should have about 1-3 meter range
  • Ask Steph for more info
  • Might have to lower Kinect mount (we want it to be able to see the floor)
  • Consider a second, rear-facing Kinect for when reversing
  • Consider tilt-actuation for Kinect
• Tray
  • A place to put things so the robot can carry them
  • Must be reachable by arm
  • Possibly retractable?
  • Probably should have compartments
  • Need to find a place for this. It could be mounted above the LIDAR, possibly off to the side.

We discussed server vs. desktop installs of Ubuntu for ALEN's PC. Professor Newman brought up that having a GUI is useful when debugging vision. I decided to install a full desktop OS on ALEN (my original plan was to use the server OS).

We discussed installing ROS on ALEN's new PC. Bill and Der Lin are good resources for this if I run into any trouble.

I need to get an end effector for this thing ASAP. There are a bunch of grippers down in 109 that I need to sort through. I should probably talk to Russell about letting me in to poke around.

I need to put together some RAPID code, and possibly a tutorial on writing RAPID code. Professor Newman wants to see if he can work it into EECS 489, allowing the class to use the robotic arm if possible. I don't know about that, but I should get some working example code

Apparently the Lunabotics group is putting a backhoe-like arm on Jinx, which means that some of what they're doing intersects with what I'm doing. Apparently they're going to work it into the final project for EECS 376. Once they get started, I should keep tabs on their progress, because we might be able to help each other.

There are a few new videos from the Southwest Research Institute, who are trying to make a ROS Industrial platform. What they're doing would grease the wheels towards making ROS play nicely with ABB products. I should look into their progress, but I don't know that I'll be able to get anything out of it.

The big thing that I need to do this week is come up with a timeline. If I have a set of goals for each week, then I can go into these meetings with a better marking stick for my progress. I wanted to do this earlier in the semester, but I was sidelined by FIRST and other things in life, which made it too hard to come up with a realistic timeline. I guess it's time to fire up MS Project again.