Digital Dave

Musings on projects, business and life.

Robotic Arm Can Pick-up

Course
CIS543 – Software Engineering Project

Final Project Description
Group Project. 4 Additional Members.

For this project, we went through a complete project life cycle. From design (vision and scope, specifications, use cases, design diagrams) and implementation (coding), to C0 testing our “product” for our professor.

Our task was to build a solution for a Lynx 6 robotic arm which located and picked up a fallen can. In addition, we would set the can upright and validate the process has been complete. The arm will continue to pick up the can until a case (out-of-range, already upright) is satisfied.

Developer’s Comments
Using agile development, our goal was to get the project elements in a working state. Once we had a functional aspect of the application, we would begin reiterating on specific points to enhance the area(s).

We broke into 2 groups. 3 member worked on the arm programming, while myself and another member worked on the vision. Once we each had something functional, we merged our solution and began reiterating on areas that needed improvement. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to much reiteration, however we all knew what could be improved and how (if time had been there).

I ended up writing about 90% of the vision element due to the programming weakness of my partner. My initial vision implementation was extremely rough, but still took just a second or two to capture an image, analyze it, and pass the object’s location and angle to the arm. The video below is an old video.

Pictures