Semester One Review

[formal]

A discussion about the future of the project

[formal]

Semester One Review

To progress the Robots project we have 2 major items of work involving hardware:

1. The laser scanner

   I think work on the laser scanner is progressing well and the bulk of the work remaining is to write software on the Edison & remote machines.

2. Driving the robot wheels

   The Robot is now complete and only needs some of the boards to be repositioned. I have done some testing and movement is pretty accurate, but wheel slip is an issue. Driving the omnidirectional wheels is going to be a difficult task; here for a brief introduction to the problem.

I have a number of questions:

1. Should we modify the goals of the project?
2. Does anyone have other ideas about what we should do?
3. Does anyone want to take on the task of writing the software to drive the wheels?
4. What would be the consequences of not having wheels for several sprints?

[JackSmith54]

I would definitely be interested on writing the software to drive the wheels anyway.

On the other questions, we could spend half of Mondays meeting discussing modifying/discussing where we want to go with the project and then spend the second half on the first sprints planning.

[JackSmith54]

Also just to clarify question 4, do you mean that we won't have access to the wheels at all for several sprints or just that the task is difficult so it may not be easy to get get working properly straight away?

[formal]

I mean that " it may not be easy to get get working properly straight away".

[JackSmith54]

I only realised now that you said we have to have the discussion before the meeting next Monday.

I don't have any changes that I would make to the goals at this point.

On the wheels issue, the point of having a simulator was that if other parts weren't done it could be used I thought?

Once there was people working on getting the wheels working/integrated with the rest of the project then I don't see it as an issue

[RyanConnell]

"... the point of having a simulator was that if other parts weren't done it could be used"

The only problem with that is, we don't have working simulator to use. Regardless of this we will have a working laser and a full connection between all other devices, which will be very useful this sprint.

Regarding software: The mapping is still not perfect due to the lack of real world testing that was done. I definitely thing that the mapping needs to be working on some more in the future. Mainly just to use the data it receives to make a better estimated view of the map.