Minutes

Easter Term 2004

Meeting 1

• Minutes of Meeting 26^th May 2004.

• Present: Jan Maciejowski, Mark Mellors, Andrew Lamb.

• Mark and Andrew: update on progress so far, particularly with frame design and chosen drive design.

• Reported that now approaching stage where building of frame can commence.

• Brief discussion of budget breakdown. Totals about £280 so far for structure and mechanical drive system.

• More detail to be given to cost of electronic systems.

• Range of budget to be estimated, rather than specific amounts.

• Identified sensors as being a concern – more research is required. Investigation of pendulum with linear accelerometer to give change from vertical position – the previous work on this dates back to 1985 and new technologies may be available.

• Jan: job number given for use with the project (specific information referring to project required when used).

• Andrew: No progress made on PDA controller front due to dead-end responses from LCE staff.

• Jan: Book called PDA Robotics was signed off – now on order with Pembroke College library. Due to arrive in one week.

• NOTE: Andrew has now bought an HP iPAQ for himself! Should make the project a little easier…..

• Jan: Records must be kept of all design decisions, calculations etc i.e.: why choose the PDA route rather than FPGAs or PICs?.

• Contact to be made with: Mick Furber (EIETL); Richard Taylor (Data logger project); Electronic Development Group (contact is Dr. Dukic); Dave Goutry (workshop near LR7); Oatley Lab (Andrew has contacts); Supervisor for 4^th year project that used PDA controller system two years ago.

• Next meeting proposed 2 weeks from today.

• Last meeting of term proposed 2pm Thursday 17^th May.

Meeting with Markus Kuhn

• Micromechanical devices from Maxim or Analogue Devices, need ADC - Dynamic error?

• External reference - laser range finders - time resolution - use accelerometers etc

• Position in a room

• Contact: USB device (serial interface) - email is to be forwarded to us

• Markus would be interested in working on it!

• Learning algorithm approach:

• Discrete control

• Interpolation/extrapolation from past experience

• States: Angle, current speed

• Brute force computing - searching

• Piecewise linear

• Catch outliers in prediction unit

• Amount of experience needed?

• Brute force method initially to produce a map of pointers for control

• Fairly powerful computer needed initially

• Intermediate goals on route and don't choose goals that are unreasonable

• Two separate control systems in layered approach

• State for environment (ground) parameter

• Account for tyre pressure?

• Robust! Programmer can't destroy electronics

• Hang it up and control!

Meeting 2

Michaelmas Term 2004

Week 1 Supervision

• Glen Vinnicombe at 12noon in LT0 lecture!

• Supervisions on Mondays at 4pm

• Webspace gives marks for project organisation

• 18th to 25th Nov range for talk

• Schedule of tests for 'remote control wheel'

• Speak to Mick Furber about allocation of space for project

• 4F1 lectures may be relevant

• Ball & Beam has double loop feedback system

Week 2 Supervision

• Risk Assessment

• Warn Mr. Furber when using remote control

• Block diagram of system including double loop

• Email MS Project plan to Dr. Mac!

• Storage space in Part II EIST project lab

• Bring the helicopter report next week

• Chase up Peter Long for gyro specs

• Speak to mechanics lab about testing rate gyros

• Check frequency of IR sensor using carriage from inverted pendulum experiment on sine wave

• All velocity signals on controller rather than velocity and direction (to start with)

• Dave Goultry (332764, dpg@eng) to ask about dataloggers - knows about inverted pendulum kit

Week 3 Supervision

• Do up Word systems diagram on Simulink (sunday)

• Get 'Bicycling Science' book

• Dubious bit is conversion of torque demand into voltage demand: could have extra feedback of present acc.

• (True if angular velocity is constant - might not matter is acc. is quick!)

• Determine inertia of motor & gearbox to test significance

• Use simulink to figure out effect of other parameters

• Flywheel speed from tacometer on block diagram

• Rolling road from Allan McRobie

• Monday 22nd talk at 12noon to 4pm

• Fundraising letter prep with budget

Week 4 Supervision

• Interdependence of two control loops: leave open?

• link from wheel speed to reduce gain of turn at high speed? Done?

• Weight shifting using solenoids for fine tuning

• Use mechanics lab gyros to measure platform used in testing

• Simulink help files on teaching system

• Mathworks website examples: 'non-holonomic' - search!

• Non-holonomic: need more variables to describe where it is than are available: forward, sideways, wheel turning

• 3-bar inverted pendulum (Japan) - 'look up Furuta'

Week 5 Supervision

• check all gyros are the same

• 256 levels of motor control may be excessive

P.J.Long meeting

• investigate 4QD speed controllers

• hardware interfaces to reduce bandwidth

• potentiometer to measure flywheel position

• foam padding on panels may reduce noise/vibrations

Week 6 Supervision

• Pembroke funding: some progress and ideas but may take time. Matching funding best option

• Next week's talk: Mark and I should not contribute to each other's talks but can answer questions raised

• Talk preparations: internet site presentation; copies on USB, laptop and pen drive. 10 minutes talk time

• Use hierarchical method for circuit system diagram

• Table for speed controller comparison - Andrew

• Speak to Patrick Palmer in Div. B about speed controllers and spares

Week 7 Assessment Talk

The supervision this week was replaced by the project presentation

• Speak to Malcom Smith about stability assessment

• Rate Gyro??? Speak to Glen Vinnicombe

• Talk to Glen Vinnicombe regarding choice of controller

• Carmen Ho: Sim Mechanics & Tyre friction models - set up a meeting

• Research Kalman filter, bifurcation maps and poincaire maps

• Could use Dave's image recognition project to track in X, Y

• Enter delays into algorithm loop on Simulink model

• Film & Measure angle of lean?

• Compile Simulink to C++??? Or just C? Ask John Else

Week 8 Supervision

• Investigate Sharp and Futaba for funding

• RAEng and IEE grants?

• Try using a smaller motor in the simulink model

• Add friction & backlash into the model

• Get in touch with Hugh Hunt's student

• Change model to make angles relative to vertical

• Investigate dynamics of rigid bodies w.r.t. angle transformations

• Focus point for thought is Euler angles

Lent Term 2005

Week 1 Supervision

• Speak to Dave Miller about using the mechanical design workshop space

Week 2 Supervision

• Put Gyro results on website

• HTML version of our reports on website?

• Longer gyro test for drift to answer whether effect is a time delay

• Correct the equation that was given incorrectly in Mark's report

• Get Mark to email latest photo

• Order Active Robots through EIETL and new job. no.

Week 3 Supervision

• CANCELLED

National Instruments Demonstration

• Thursday 10th February

• Business card for Ian Matthews

• Can arrange training with Ian for Wednesday 16th Feb

• Templates are available form 'new' button

• Front panel is basic interface

• MAX can be used for connection and has to detect FPGA

• Need to configure the FPGA and processor interface

• Can run wizards to split into real time, Windows, comms etc

• 'Project' approach rather than hardware approach

• Q: PDA module available?

• Q: Is the 'three' FPGA the 'big' FPGA?

• Can have home licenses from Uni license so can install on laptop

• Extra module for importing from Simulink

Week 4 Supervision

• Speak to Jorge Goncalvez about borrowing extra analogue input module

• Speak to Dr. Britto about LabView training CDs

• Get dimensions of CompactRIO

• Order Active Robots myself and claim back

Week 5 Supervision

• Postponed

Week 6 Supervision

• Postponed

Week 7 Supervision

• Met in workshop to go through progress

Week 8 Supervision

• Ask Computer Operators for extra RAM

• Away April 10th to start of term

• Deadline for balancing forward/back is 10th April

• Phone NI Technical Support!

• Help System for signal conditioning issues