Autonomy Sync Up - 9/15/2022

Owned by Austin Tailon Huang
Sept 16, 2022
2 min read

Meeting Attendants

  • Orson

  • Nico

  • Austin

Meeting Agenda

  • Discuss autonomy mission specs

  • Sync up on functionality, inputs and goals

  • Discuss potential disruption events

  • Brainstorm autonomy “plan of attack”

Main Challenges

  • Localization is incredibly important

System Inputs

  • GNSS coordinates (need to be accurate within 2m)

  • QR codes

  • Not really an input but continuing to track and publish GNSS coords and wheel speeds will help us detect stall events - may be worth looking into

System Outputs

  • LED Matrix Status

  • Gate Pass Status

System Functionality

  • Autonomy/Teleoperation Switches

Events to De-Risk

  • Motor Stall (rover gets stuck on a rock or something)

  • Camera gets dirty (object detection gets messed up)

  • Gimbal vibrational impact

    • is there someway we can detect heavy vibrations and camera shake

  •  

Autonomy Plan of Attack

 

  • Easy dub is to just turn on the zed2 and identify a QR code

  • Solve localization first. This is the most important part of autonomy. How can we actively track and publish GNSS coordinates

    • Look into differential GNSS

    • Look into ROS nav2 and localization

  • Get control and live video feed of the ZED2 camera

    • Ensure we can actually identify codes on our hardware (should be relatively easy)

  • Look into plans to identify QR codes

    • Some thoughts: drive to GNSS coordinates, sweep out to 20m, scan with gimbal to identify codes

    • Are there more efficient processes? What are the alternatives

  • Gate definition - what do we do after identifying a QR code?

    • gates are located 2m apart - what happens when one QR code for the gate is not within field of view, but what is?

    • determine if this is an issue through testing

    • we could drive to some calculated distance based off of FOV to always capture 2m horizontal viewing distance

  • How should we save the location of previous gates

  • later project - create active autonomy map that updates live during mission (what is the path of the rover)

  • Take a second look into what “difficult” terrain means. is this:

    • rocks that are traversable?

    • obstacles (probably not)

Action Items

Get ZED2 working and identify QR codes (no gimbal control, all SW)
Get QR codes printed! @Austin Tailon Huang
Start researching localization ASAP. What hardware do we have, what information do we need, what is differential GNSS
Set up the base station (mech and EE, but important to note)