This was a very good weekend in terms of results of the work we've been doing, in several fronts:
- Maria:
- After a period were we've been struggling with some overexposure of light, we did some more tests... first we tested with a different projector with 2000 lumens instead of the 800 lumens of the one we were using, but it was too much light. Not even calibrating the exposure helped. We then did a test that involved using different polarized lens on the projector and on the camera, but didn't helped as well. The last test we did and from which we got some good results was mounting the camera on different places. We will continue this last test during this week, because it seems we can have some acceptable results if we change the camera to the opposite place from where it is now, but we still need to build a base and test it better.
- We also got the visit from our professor of Physics and Mathematics, Prof. Rogério Cardoso who accepted our invitation and came to evaluate the project and gave us some more ideas to pursuit. One of each was to use some different materials. We should test with a metal mirror instead of the glass we are currently using, because the reflection of the metal is more diffuse than of the glass. He also recommend for us to try a top glass that could pass the full infra-red spectrum of light and not only the visible light. Let's see if we can find this materials any where and at an affordable price.
- Finally we achieved something we were trying for some weeks... to get a solution to let Windows recognize "Maria" as a fully multitouch interface.
- Chasso control:
- We took all the stuff of one of the rooms and marked on the floor an area of 5 meters by 3 meters as we want to use on the "test room for Chasso".
- With the room ready we then did a batch of tests for running Chasso for periods of 5 and 15 seconds, with a battery level with 71% and 87% (by the existing data we know we shouldn't use Chasso with less of 70% of it's 9 volts power), running the motor at a speed of 50% of battery power.
- We then proceed to do a first statistic analysis of the collected data and one of the "interesting" things we found was that even on a small period of time (5 seconds) Chasso could travel with a distance differences of 3 centimeters, which in terms of odometer, for estimation of position is not good. The good news, was that it worked almost the same way with 71% of battery power.
- With the data aqquired we could finally implement the functions on the software to draw Chasso on the Map as it moves around the room. This proved a very a hard task, which in overall terms took more than 24 hours to do. This happened because we just forgot that the heading circumference is different from the trigonometric circumference and only when we got over that and converted the headings bearings correctly to the trigonometric equivalent and then applied a correction based on the room position to the north (0 degrees in bearing) we finally got everything working correctly.
