Tuesday, February 28, 2012

AVC: Progress Update

I'm still on the waiting list. I'm assuming enough teams will throw in the towel to make room for me. I'm going to submit my video before the June 1 deadline.

Magnetometer calibration and accuracy has been a big challenge. I'm developing a calibration turntable to help quantify magnetometer error.

I'm evaluating several IMU sensor options including the MinIMU-9.

The robot has not yet run autonomously. For that matter, I've not done any data collection runs. I feel like I'm falling behind again.

I've also been investigating a few interesting sensor technologies in hopes of improving various aspects of the robot's performance. Implementing any of them would be kinda cool, I think.

I've been looking at options to improve linear acceleration and cornering performance. Probably getting ahead of myself there since the robot has yet to run by itself.

Oh, and I'm also enrolled in the free online course, CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car, taught by Professor Sebastian Thrun of Stanford SAIL, DARPA Grand Challenge winner, and Google Car fame. I've made it through Unit 1 and am working on the homework for Unit 2. So far the class is beyond fantastic but more on that later.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for mentioning CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car. I saw your blog post, checked it out, and decided to sign up, even though I was almost a week late. Good stuff so far!

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  2. Cool! Sad to say I bombed the first homework. Mostly because I wasn't thinking too carefully about a couple questions. I nailed the programming part tho, so that makes me happy. Hope I can do better on the 2nd HW.

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