This week was focused, again, on research. Since choosing our drone we have discovered that we need to learn more about its operating system and how we are going to be able to program it, so we started learning about ROS (Robot Operating System) using this document: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~todd/cs378/slides/Week8a.pdf.
We also took it upon ourselves to learn more about the drone that we chose and its components. We used this website to accomplish this task: http://linuxgizmos.com/linux-powered-quadrocoptor-has-three-cameras/
Moreover, we started looking more into wireless charging, because we believe that it can be much more efficient in out project if we charge the drone wirelessly instead of having it dock at a station every few minutes to recharge. The following 2 websites were used to research wireless charging: http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/technology/magnetic-resonance-and-magnetic-induction-making-the-right-choice-for-your-application.html
http://powerbyproxi.com/wireless-charging/
We also completed the system architecture for our project. It describes how every component of the project is related and will hopefully be useful to us in the future when we really start developing the project. Also, we started developing the system block diagrams in order to explore different paths to accomplish our ultimate goal, which is to have an efficient and easy to use drone delivery system. Those diagrams are not complete, but they will be in the coming days.
However, our project did encounter some obstacles. First, when we chose the drone, we only considered its use for our project and failed to take into account the price. While it is not over our budget, it does come close to our limit. It is now priced at around $900.00. Our plan to solve this issue is to find parts that we could make ourselves with the 3D printer, such as the protective ribbons that can be ordered with the drone, thus reducing the cost and allowing us to tailor these parts to our own liking/need.
Our other problem, and perhaps the most important, is the fact that we are behind schedule. By now, we should already be designing our project and starting to develop it, as shown in the gantt chart*. Ideally, in a couple of weeks, we would start designing the algorithm, but at this rate, it might be tough to do that. Our plan is now to break up the tasks that still need to be done into smaller, more manageable portions, and then distribute them between group members so that they can be done more quickly. Hopefully, if our plan works, we should be within our schedule in 3, maybe 4 weeks.
Link to Progress Report Presentation: https://docs.google.com/a/erhsnyc.net/presentation/d/1MeY274P74Ll9ivr7eyqvbRyb9BDD5HLxfVg7-sqmIxE/edit?usp=sharing
*I know the gantt chart is hard to see, but we ran into some technical difficulties with the software and could not get a better image.
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