11-5-21: Preliminary Design Begins

With all the presentations, requirements, and specifications under our belts, we are now fully equipped to dive into preliminary design head first. Using our electronic planner to triage tasks, we dedicated this week to mechanical design and software setup.

Working from our team conceptual design, the mechanical aspects of preliminary design involved deepening CAD development as we hammered out details for chassis dimensions, materials, and constraints. In no time we were able to put together renderings for subsystems such as our translational joint shown below.

Directly connected to this was the electric side of our design, which we were able to construct with more specificity as the process of component selection began. In preparation for Detailed Design next semester, we used this week to complete all major component selection decisions; from frame materials and fastening hardware, to microcontrollers and wiring.

On a more abstract note, we also used this time to begin testing software proof-of-concepts for our computer vision application. Aware of the complexity of the subject, our team tasked an experienced member with configuring an Ubuntu Operating System with the massive OpenCV libraries necessary for complex image processing. From there, a test camera was interfaced with the hardware to allow for the testing of basic computer vision functions. The result? An official-looking workstation; yummy!

Below are some intermediate image processing deliverables that we achieved in just one week, these include but are not limited to:

Capturing a still image from a video feed:

Converting to the Hue Saturation Value (HSV) colorspace:

Filtering out colors:

And even detecting contours of a specific color:

So far, all development remains on schedule as we give simultaneous effort to mechanical, electrical, and software design facets. Now if only our plant seeds would get here sooner!

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