Assorted projects and pontifications.
I finally set some time aside to build some maps of my apartment using a SLAM algorithm! I ended up using the hector_slam package in ROS to do the job. There was a lot of trial and error involved in tuning my odometry and the hector_slam algorithm, but it eventually worked just fine. Check out the screenshots below! Links Mecanumbot ROS package
Woohoo, another SpaceX project that I can share! I was the Avionics Systems Integration project lead for the Dragon 2 “pad abort” test in the video below. For this project I was responsible for determining what flight avionics boxes were required, designing and building ground-side power and communications equipment. I ultimately passed off the project after the first year of development so that I could start on a new project.…
One of the most fun projects that I’ve gotten to work on recently was the SolarSurfer project. A unique aspect of that project which I hadn’t done before was remote control via a satellite connection. The project is extensively documented on Hackaday; check out the logs on satellite comm overview, real-time tracking, and mission simulation. Here is a short summary of the different project aspects: Developed telemetry protocol for bandwidth-constrained…
SpaceX has publicly shared a sweet video about one of the projects I worked on! I was the Avionics Systems Integration project lead for the Dragon 2 “propulsion module” project in the video below. For this project I was responsible for determining what flight avionics boxes were required, designing and building ground-side power and communications equipment, and integrating and testing the complete assembly. I am proud to report a quicker…
I have updated my Mecanumbot code to the latest and greatest ROS distribution – Hydro. During the upgrade, I wrote a companion app to publish velocity commands based of of the output of my ball tracker. The result is that the Mecanumbot can follow a red ball around the room! I wrote the ball tracking code itself back in college. The segmentation approach is pretty naive, but I only spent…
In an effort to demonstrate a new django-quick-start package I’m making at work (similar in purpose to pinax, but with some SpaceX-specific packages), I decided to create an Arduino data logger that is viewable through Django. The data from a couple different sensors is first collected with an Arduino. A Python daemon polls the Arduino periodically and asks for new data. The daemon saves this data to the Django database.…
I’ve finally achieved end-to-end control of the Mecanumbot’s LEDs! The latest hurdle which prevented me from writing the LED code was a RAM limitation on the microcontroller side. The solution involved swapping over from an Arduino Duemilanove with 1KB of RAM to a Seeeduino Mega with 8KB of RAM. The increased RAM also opens the door for me to code up the Mecanumbot low-level telemetry including items like bus voltage and bus current.…
I built this little robot out of Lego this week (see picture.) The electronics include an Arduino, a Sparkfun xBee shield, and an Adafruit motor shield. On the other side of the xBee shield is a linux box running ROS. With ROS I can generated velocity messages from my keyboard or with a Wiimote. These messages get sent to the Arduino which translates the commands into individual motor speeds. I…
Alright. I have decided that I do not have the time or desire to figure out the controls problems that the Ball Bot presents. I really am interested in the navigation and localization challenges that I can work on with a functioning robotic platform. So what I need is a platform that is easy and that I know will work. Enter in the statically stable, four wheeled robot that I…
My biggest contribution to USC’s AeroDesign Team this year was a new MATLAB repository called PlaneTools. PlaneTools includes a collection of programs that aim to make airplane design easier. Chief among these programs is a mission simulator with simulates an airplane’s flight based on the rules of the AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition that we make planes for. A user of PlaneTools can construct a plane out of parts in the PlaneTools…