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 Specifications

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 - also see the Software page
  • GUI Code
  • Hardware Code
  • Control Code
• QT Designer

How-to

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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