Trixxie

Trixxie
Year Of Creation	2005-2006
Versions
Current Version	deprecated
Update Year	n/a
Information and Statistics
Farthest Distance	0 feet
Fastest Time	n/a
Highest Placement AutoNav	28th
Highest Placement Design	13th

Competitions

IGVC 2006

• Results
  • Distance: 0 feet
  • Design Competition Placement: 13th in design group (454 / 800 points)
  • AutoNav Competition Placement: 28th (last)

Versions

Trixxie

Mechanical Issues & Improvements

Trixxie is a basic cube-shaped robot with two motors mounted on the front. The base has three layers in ascending order: a level for holding Trixxie's heavy batteries, a mid level for holding electronics and the laptop, and a top level on which a payload may sit.

Electrical Issues & Improvements

The electronic hardware of the IGVC robot is built around a central laptop. The laptop provides a central processing unit for all data aquired from the modules.

View a schematic diagram of the modules, power distribution, and code.

Laptop Hardware Specs

Internal Access:

• Processor
  • Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40GHz

• Physical Memory
  • 512 MB RAM

• IDE Master
  • 30GB ATA-5 4200RPM HD
  • File system partition = dev/hda2 18GB

External Access: The inputs and outputs of the laptop are described by which physical side of the laptop on which they occur.

• Rear

1. DC-in Jack
2. Parallel Port
3. External Display Port (AGP)
4. Video Out Port (S-Video)
5. Serial Port
6. Two USB Ports - Each supports USB 1.0 and 2.0
7. Modem Jack
8. Network Jack
9. PS/2 Port

• Left

1. Security Keylock
2. Firewire Port (IEEE 1394)
3. Audio Line-in Jack
4. Audio Line-out Jack
5. Volume Control Knob
6. 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive

• Right
  • PC Card Slot - Accepts one Type III PC card or two Type I/II PC cards

• Front
  • IDE Slave
  • DVD/CDRW-

Laptop Software

Under Construction - To add a how-to for using the GUI, descriptions of the files, and additional software development tools.

OS: The IGVC laptop is running Debian Linux kernel v.2.6.8.1. The KDE v.3.3 desktop environment is also running on the machine.

GUI: To activate the GUI, open a UNIX terminal, navitage to laptop_svn, and type ./IGVC.

Software Development:

• Laptop Code
  • GUI Code
  • Hardware Code
  • Control Code
• QT Designer

How-Tos:

1. Capture video data through IEEE 1394

Software Issues & Improvements

Most of the code this year was written by Ben, David, or Spencer. Much of this code was also inherited from the 2004-2005 year. There are notes on that code here: File:Notes on Ben's Code.pdf.

The code is stored in an SVN repository:

URL: svn://130.207.76.145/igvc
Username/Password: Talk to David, Spencer, or Michael to get one.

The following image sequences were taken on 10/08/2005 as test footage for creating vision algorithms.

1. IGVCclip1.zip - IGVCclip1movie.mov
2. IGVCclip2.zip - IGVCclip2movie.mov
3. IGVCclip3.zip - IGVCclip3movie.mov
4. IGVCclip4.zip - IGVCclip4movie.mov
5. IGVCclip5.zip - IGVCclip5movie.mov
6. IGVCclip6.zip - IGVCclip6movie.mov

Animations were assembled and uploaded by David, using the ConcatenateMovieSegments program.

Additional Information

Gallery

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  Competition track

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  Competition track

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  Tree obstacle

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  Unloading the robot

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  Preparing for a run

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  Robot chassis

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  Robot drive train

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  Measuring the drive train

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  Measuring the wheels

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  Working in the tent

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