We initially collected robot and learned how to turn it on. Physical cables & peripherals were used to connect, and I began to update the Raspberry Pi. The software hadn't been updated in a long time and wifi was slow, so this process took a long time. After this initial setup, I looked into ways to remotely connect to the robot from a laptop.
This session consisted of establishing a reliable method for connecting to the robot remotely from a laptop, and testing the basic functionallities of the robot via the pre-loaded example python scripts. I was able to connect to the robot in 2 different ways: via the built-in remote connect feature of the Raspberry Pi OS and website, and via a VNC connection. Going forward, I would personally use the Raspberry Pi remote connect, although the rest of my group preferred VNC because only 1 email address can be linked to a Pi at a time.
This session involved digging through the robot's existing calibration function and API to learn how to calibrate the downward-facing grayscale sensor, as well as the mechanical components. I learned how the robot stores offset and reference values representing the colors it sees and the angles of mechanical components. I was able to implement a basic calibration script which returns the robot to a default state with all offsets zeroed out.
This was a documentation-focused session in which an HTML framework for our project site was made. I documented all of my work up to this point and helped contribute to media on the site, retrieving files stored locally on the robot. Also, final deliverable goals were agreed upon and documented so our group only had a line-following algorithm left to write.
This was our final testing/overview session before the submission of the project. We laid out multiple line courses for the robot to follow, and observed how effective it was at sticking to or re-finding the line. No major modifications to our line following algorithm were needed. I helped build courses with harsher turns and curves to test the robot under more difficult conditions.