Todo

Tasks

There is quite a wide array of topics we would like a help with. This is organised into several topics.

Pressure sensors

Study, analyze, test and design pressure sensors for legs of this project. Idea is that for proper movement we want pressure feedback from the robot.

Even though the feedback may not be used for the motion itself, it is great source of information for analysis of any movememnts. We would also like to explore 3D pressure sensors, for better understanding of the situation..

Automatic update of STM32G4 chips

For longterm use case of this project, we want to use base board with specific embedded STM32G4 microprocessor (ARM). The final design is distributed system, where tasks (sensory reading, leg movement, gimbal) are managed by multiple chips communicating with each other. We want to use one chip in each unit, what we are lookin for is abillity to update all chips on the robot at once with an ease.

Tile PCB

We also designed custom PCB with the STM32G4, this should serve as base board used on the robot eitehr directly or with shield. This is same design model as arduino and other boards. The key difference is that our board is smaller and tightly designed around expecations we have.

The size of the board is 24x24mm as it uses shape of our general mounting system - Tile

We have designed second iteration of the PCB in KiCAD, what we are looking for are people to test the design and finish it.

OcTree refactoring

We are using octree implementation as main data structure for 3D shapes. While actual implementation is working well, we would like to refactor the codebase around this.

Additionally, we would like the new implementation to switch between 8/64/256-nary trees for 3D space representation.

This is motivated by octomap

It is advisable to have at least advanced C++ knowledge to attempt this.

3D Manual for building

(taken)

Write a standalone library for simple creation fo 3D manuals for assembly of robots. We want to be able to use 3D viewports over a set of parts, and animate how they should be assembled. This should be interactive, as user can manually make ‘steps’ of assembly.

As separate 3D viewport, we would want abillity to pair parts between 3D view and table with data concerned the part. (Such as name, link to source file of that part, etc….)

Given existence of libraries such as three.js and the fact that we can generate these sets of part, this could be done with reasonable amount of work.

Haskell Data Generator

Various ROS tools use various form of configuration. Primary CAD tool - OpenSCAD - has also limited capabillity for more semantical approach to modelling the robot.

We use our custom haskell library to define an API for “Walker” robot description. Based on that description we can generate URDF/SRDF/Launch files for ROS.

This library is in beta stage and needs proper refurbishing and finalization of various parts. This includes development of proper standalone parser of OpenSCAD language for getting additional information about the programmed model.

Optical flow for Schpin

(taken)

Key component of robotics is abillity to position the robot in environment. There is no single solution for this, and robots use multiple different kinds of sensors.

We would like to analyze if optical flow is viable option for legged robots. This technique analyses flow of pixels between frames, and based on that it provides estimate of position change of camera. This can be used with other aboslute position techniques to provide precise positioning.