Candi

Candiii
[[]]
Year Of Creation	2006-2007
Versions
Current Version	deprecated
Update Year	2007-2008, 2008-2009
Information and Statistics
Farthest Distance	235 feet
Fastest Time	n/a
Highest Placement AutoNav	6th
Highest Placement Design	9th

Competitions

IGVC 2007

• Bot Version: Candi
• Results
  • Distance: 123 feet
  • Design Competition Placement: 9th (743 / 1100 points)
  • AutoNav Competition Placement: 7th

IGVC 2008

• Bot Version: Candii
• Results:
  • Distance: 185 feet
  • Design Competition Placement: 18th (778.33 / 1100 points)
  • AutoNav Competition Placement: 9th

IGVC 2009

• Bot Version: Candiii
• Results:
  • Distance: 235 feet
  • Design Competition Placement: 21st (476.67 / 1100 points)
  • AutoNav Competition Placement: 6th

Versions

Candi (V1.0)

Mechanical Issues & Improvements

Old BattleBots motors. A new frame is currently being fabricated from 1" square tubing. New body will have front suspension and a giant ball caster in the rear.

Electrical Issues & Improvements

• Router: Motorola WR850GP
  • Hardware
    • Broadcom 4712 @ 200MHz
    • Storage: 4MB Flash
    • Ram: 16MB
    • Wireless: Integrated Broadcom
    • Switch: ADM6996L (4 Port)
    • Serial: Two headers
    • Power: +12VDC, 0.5A
  • Software
    • OpenWrt (White Russian 0.9)
      • 2.4.30 Kernel
      • Available Software
        • Official Packages
        • 3rd Party Packages
• Monitor
• Environmental Data Acquisition System
• Positioning System
• Mapping and Path-finding System
• Power System
• Motor System
• Emergency Stop System

Software Issues & Improvements

PlayerStage

Code from Graduate Students - Restricted access (must be logged in to access)

There are two perspective transforms that need to be implemented, the rectilinearizing transform and the planar perspective transform.

• Rectilinearizing Transform
• Simple in theory. Very hard to make work fast though. I have posted preliminary MATLAB code and am hoping to use vertex shaders to speed processing and autofill data gaps, but I don't know what hardware is available at the moment or how to write Cg.
• Scratch that, I have an OpenGL version working in C so the MATLAB one is unnecessary. Right now the OGL app is stand alone and only works on pictures named "pic.bmp" that are a 720x480 image in the bottom left corner of a 24bit 1024x1024 bmp image. Included is the Cygwin makefile(should work on any system with glut in $INCLUDE but give a warning), the pic.bmp test image, and source. Press any key to quit the program. The source code is massive, so a good text editor will be needed to edit.

• Planar Perspective Transform: Version 1.0

  Very simple and fast if data given in a convenient format. In development, I will post when I have a semistable implementation.

• HOLY SH*T!!!

  I went to the railroad today, took a picture with the camera, and dvgrabbed it back home.

  I was going to do some math and such, but then I thought, "What the hell, lets see what happens if I just stick it into the transform..." and LOOK WHAT I SAW!:

--->

• OGMWTFBBQ&HOW!

  I knew it was good, but that is amazing!--Paul 11:32, 20 May 2007 (EDT)

Candii (V2.0)

Electrical Issues & Improvements

Diagram showing the flow of data between the various robot controller components

Needs correction:

• GPS communicates over COM2(/dev/ttyS1)
• Time server (NTP) runs on the TS board reading the Data Carrier Detect (DCD) line of COM2
• Add: TS Board is running an NTP server to define robot time
• Software modules should be included
• Rename "Arduino" -> "Motor Arduino"
• Add "Power Arduino"
• Fix: Wheel Encoders will be communicating over SPI

Software Issues & Improvements

Our code for this year is stored in Subversion and is accessible at https://svn.robojackets.org/igvc/2008. The laptop codebase will be written in C++.

Contributers to the laptop codebase should ensure that they are following our coding conventions.

Player/Stage:

We are using the Player/Stage robot server as the communication layer between our device drivers and our processing/controlling software modules.

As we've used the Player server, occasionally we've needed to patch it to better suit our needs. Below are our custom patches:

• Player Patch - WaitForNewImage

Candiii (V3.0)

Mechanical Issues & Improvements

Candiii's body has remained essentially the same for the last 2 years.

Electrical Issues & Improvements

Candiii has two isolated power systems: one for the motors and one for the other electronics.

Other Electronics:

• Camera
• LIDAR
• IMU
• GPS
• Compass
• Motor encoders
• Motor currents

Software Issues & Improvements

Localization and Mapping:

• Papers:
  • Media:FastSLAM.pdf
  • Media:FastSLAM2.pdf
  • Media:Square Root SAM.pdf

Controls:

• PI-Lead control(?)
• Joystick