Week 4

Overview of Activities

Group Meeting

As usual, we held a group meeting on Wednesday, one day before our last lab session on Thursday. Knowing that our Bench Inspection would be on next week's Thursday, we were under pressure to ensure that we completed all the actual lab work this week, though we had the option to take some extra lab time on Friday if we really needed to. Thus, we discussed our progress on the project so far and what we would need to do the next day. We also went over the materials that we would need for the Bench Inspection, checked our progress, and revised who was responsible for what. During the meeting itself, we worked on our individual log books, and updated our group's role allocation and contribution to project deliverables forms.

Lab Day

Some group members worked on the project's exterior, trying to make it look more presentable. They were able to cover all the sides of the cardboard box with thin black sheets which made it look much neater. Well I guess our project's colour theme was now black, and looking at it, the red tape holding the rotating brackets in place, really stood in contrast to the black, but we thought it made the project look more lively; not to mention that we neither had the time nor energy to change that. We also embedded the set up in a white board to increase stability.

Furthermore, Our lead developer had been working tirelessly since last week's lab session to adjust the code controlling the project. This allowed us to start testing the whole project again. The tracking of the object had become more smooth, compared to last week, but still not as good as we were hoping. After adjustments to the code, as well as the setup, we were able to have the object tracked quite smoothly. However, it would have to be moved a little slowly so that it doesn't exit the camera's field of view, which would stop the tracking. Overall, the tracking was at an acceptable level. Moreover, We were also able to implement automatic selection of the object to be tracked, based on a combination of colour detection by the RGB sensor, along with image processing of the camera's input.

At last, we had a device that could detect an object of the selected colour, and track that object using the image it receives from a webcam, and using two servos for pan and tilt control. Oh, I almost forgot... we also finally decided on a new name for our project- Colour Chaser.

Challenges

• It proved difficult to improve the smoothness of tracking. Firstly, the pi was connected to one of the lab's desktop computers for its control, instead of the laptop it was previously connected to. This seemed to reduce the jitters, and to generally improve the tracking; possibly hinting at a delay in the connection between the pi and the laptop. Additionally, the code was adjusted so that the servos would move in 5 degree increments instead of 10. 5 degrees seemed to allow the smoothest tracking, compared to the other tested values of 10 and 2 degrees.
• As the camera rotated, the whole setup would shake due to the cardboard box casing being very light and just not having a perfectly flat surface at the bottom. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, we embedded the whole set up in a, comparatively large, white board, which increased the stability of the setup, despite making the project less compact and harder to store or transport.

Tasks for next Meeting

1. Prepare to give a presentation on the bench inspection day
2. Finalise and print the project management forms as well as the poster

Reflections

1. Every group member gained invaluable experience, during the past 4 weeks, with electronics; controlling actuators and sensors with code; as well as documentation of work.
2. Completing such a project in the available time required a great team effort. Thus, throughout the past 4 weeks, we were forced to develop our teamwork skills. This included communication skills to propose (or oppose) ideas; as well as allocating and managing responsibilities.