Minutes

Last updated: 13 November, 2002

CS 425

Date: January 23, 2002
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Duration: 45 min
Location: EB 0011 & UC
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:
Discussed possible meeting schedules.
Decided to start learning UNIX ASAP.
Brad got emails and decided to send out an initial email to everyone in the group.
Peter, J.D., and Brad moved to UC after class ended.
Peter decided to come up with some questions to ask Dr. White, the client, about the project.
Peter told J.D. to email him if he thought of any questions.

Date: January 25, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 1 hr 45 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D.
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Met with the client about some questions we had dealing with the project definition.
Decided that we needed to address lots of questions of possible problems, but not to answer all questions. We came to the conclusion that we only need to answer the questions we know that is the way we will implement the problem. The client gave us a few nonfunctional requirements and some functional requirements, but left the details up to us and what is capable of the robot(s). The client left after an hour and fifteen minutes.

J. D. decided to break the room up into 4-5 areas, each with different problems and hazards. Matt came up with the idea to put a barcode around the bottom of the chair if we were to use a barcode, instead of putting it on the back of the chair as the client mentioned.

Date: January 30, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 2 hours
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Decided to meet every Monday and Wednesday at 4
Decided to put files on csfs2 folder as text only (no special formatting)
Decided on naming conventions for documents:
<Project Area>_<NameOfFile>_<Version>.<type>
Peter suggested the idea that we might use a State-Transition Diagram
Peter assigned the roles of Analyst to all group members for the PDD, since no clear-cut
roles can be assigned yet
Peter suggested that we could possibly map out a path from the chair to the desk with the
robot before it gets the chair

Date: February 4, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 1 hr 45 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We discussed the PDD
Peter came up with an idea to make the code modular by making each working section into some form like a dll file or something similar so we could have code to just plug in and maybe for future use of the robots in general
Talked about the website we need to work on
Discussed the main page of the website, and we are going to look for templates
Talked about presenting the PDD
Peter briefly covered HTML with the rest of the group

Date: February 6, 2002
Time: 5:15
Duration: 30 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We made a few last minute changes to our PDD.
We put the PDD on the dropbox, and updated it to the website, in order to get it ready to turn in.
After class, we talked about meeting Saturday to look at the robots.
J.D. decided to work on updating the PDD in HTML.
The decision on who was to work on the Power Point slides was left up in the air.

Date: February 11, 2002
Time: 4:15
Duration: 1 hr
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Talked about the Power Point Slides.
Divided different areas of the PDD between group members.
Peter will introduce the project with the Summary, Overview.
Peter will also talk about the Objectives and the Organization.
Matt will talk about the Scope.
Brad will talk about the Risks, along with the Cost and Duration.
J.D. will talk about the Assumptions and the Approach.
Each person will work on their part of the slides, then we will combine them Wed.

Date: February 13, 2002
Time: 4:10
Duration: 1 hr 25 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Peter combined the slides, and everyone made some changes to make them consistent.
Made final touches on slides.
Talked to the NORRT team about the voice recognition on the robot they are using.
Andrew showed us a demo program on how the laser finder works.

Date: February 17, 2002
Time: 6:30
Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We took some pictures for the website
Documents will be released with a major/minor versioning system
Discussed roles on RAFS project:
Brad – Graphics chart/diagrams
Peter – Manage changes
J.D. – Combine documentation
Brad will create an archive directory on the ftp site
We will keep current versions of documents and diagrams
We divided the Project Organization
Brad – Roles and Responsibilities
J.D. – External Interfaces
Peter – Internal Structure
Peter said someone should create a general thread in tofu for the PPD
We are going to look at the lifecycle models and decide which will be the best
Brad had his book, and we decided that the Design to Schedule would be the best lifecycle model for this project
We will probably use Microsoft Project and it’s chart-building capabilities
Think of some ideas for milestones in the project

Date: February 20, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met to discuss the presentation for the Project Definition Document.
We finalized what everyone was going to say.
We found an empty room and practiced for the night’s presentation.

Date: February 24, 2002
Time: 6:45
Duration: 2 hr 15 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We talked about the lifecycle model
Came up with 4 high priorities for lifecycle model:
· recognizing a chair
· recognizing a desk
· moving without a chair
· moving with a chair
We drew a timeline on the board, which will be used in the PPD.
Resource and Development stages are as follows:
March 9 – learn about gripper and collision detection (determine whether we will use the default or make our own collision detection)
March 16 – utilizing some sort of log file with regard to room status and decisions of robot and movement with gripper being used (sonar issues/laser issues)
March 23 – object recognition (evaluating each of the sensors)
March 30 – cont. from 23rd
Peter got on Microsoft Project to learn how to make Gantt charts, and to get familiar with the program in general
We talked about the different plans (test plan, documentation plan, review plan, and installation plan)
We decided to assign one person each a separate section of the high priorities to work on, but that decision will be made after we go through the Resource and Development stage for each area.
Roles will be as follows for recent work:
Brad – lifecycle model section, picture and definition of timeline, organization plan, risk assessment plan
Matt – timeline, first sections dealing with PDD
Peter – Gantt charts
J.D. – combine timeline to one document, test plan, documentation plan, review plan, installation plan

Date: February 25, 2002
Time: 4:15
Duration: 1 hr 25 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We worked on the PPD
We talked about all the major design decisions made thus far in the project. We will discuss the following:
· Aria & Saphira
· Code Warrior
· We need to work on the Research and Development (R & D) before a clear understanding of most design decisions
· We need to get more familiar with the robot, which we will do on Saturdays
· Things will surface during the R & D meetings
Configuration Management – CVS for controlling source code. It is traditional for Unix applications. We must adhere to the rules built into CVS by default (merging of code, etc.). We will recycle make files that are already in use. Review minutes and make sure the older documents are up-to-date.
Verification & Validation – Dr. White, RAFS team. J.D. checks when combining. If time permits, someone will check over the final document.
Problem Resolution – Dr. White would solve something beyond our control, but the RAFS team will fix a majority of problems. Problems with the website and project management will be controlled by Peter. Problem with R & D refer to Dr. Weinberg and Dr. Umbaugh.
Process Improvement – Ensure that Saturday work gets done on Saturday, leaving Monday open to documents so we don’t get behind. Research on an individual basis.
Schedule Control – Research on Saturday. Come up with clear ideas between Wednesday and Saturday. Know what documents we will be using (from Activmedia’s website, etc.) beforehand. Have somewhat of an outline, along with some kind of a lead coming into the work to be done on Saturday. Make Monday more of a document day than a research day.
Project Metrics – Modules from Saturday’s work, modules in implementation, completed sections (charts in documents, updates to website).
Reporting – Minutes, problems should surface quickly, reporting of PDD, PPD (PowerPoint slides, etc.).
Resource Allocation – Robot has been allocated exclusively to us for this project. Peter has administrative rights to the small robot.

Date: February 27, 2002
Time: 1:40
Duration: 4 hr 5 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Put finishing touches on PPD
We needed to add sections that were missing (small points – nothing that was from Dr. White’s requirements)

Date: March 1, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 5 hr 15 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We worked on programming the robot to move, and if it would run into something, to react in some way
We spent a lot of time reading documentation
Peter stayed longer than everybody else, and got a working copy in C

Date: March 6, 2002
Time: 4:15
Duration: 1 hr 35 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Peter split the group into groups
· J.D. & Brad worked on slides
· Peter & Matt worked on Prototypes
Peter decided for everybody to learn about one area of the robot
· Brad – camera
· J.D. – laser
· Matt – sonar
· Peter – bumpers

Date: March 17, 2002
Time: 6:20
Duration: 1 hr 40 min
Location: Peter’s house
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We discussed the prototypes
Peter came up with the idea of writing a prototype that demonstrates threads
Two more prototypes:
· Thread-safe programming with Saphira and ARIA
· Inter-robot communication
We looked at the slides
· Brad – Lifecycle Model/Timeline/Gantt Chart
· Peter – Organization Plan/Software Tools & Packages
· J.D. – Test Plan/Documentation Plan/Review Plan/Installation Plan
· Matt – Design Decisions/Risk/Activities to Accomplish/Project Summary
Learn UNIX section:
· Make files
· G++
· Robot editor
· Basic file management

Date: March 18, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 1 hr 45 min
Location: EB 2029/EB 0012
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We finalized who was going to do what parts
We ran through our presentation in an open room (EB 0012) a couple of times, finalizing what everybody was going to say
We talked about the prototypes briefly

Date: March 20, 2002
Time: 4:20
Duration: 1 hr 25 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

Talked about the Design Document
Peter wanted to get roles assigned:
· Peter – Project Leader
· Matt – Lead Designer
· Brad – Lead Programmer
· J.D. – Lead Documenter, Lead Tester
Broke up section 2 of DD as follows:
· 2.1 Design Standards – Matt
· 2.2 Document Standards – J.D.
· 2.3 Naming Conventions – Peter
· 2.4 Programming Standards – Brad
· 2.5 Software Development Tools – Peter
Think of classes to use:
· Chair
· Desk
· Random (location, etc.)
· Error
· Walls
Modules
· Movement
· Chair Handling
· Object Recognition (chair, desk, other)
· Error Logging
We need to make a State Diagram, and Sequence Diagrams
We found out about a new risk to our program. The NORRT group is temporarily (hopefully) using the small robot because of a problem they are having with the large one.
Sunday – Matt and Peter will meet to discuss design decisions
J.D. will draw diagrams for the different modules
Brad will come up with some other ideas for classes
Peter came up with the idea of a structure for library dlls:
They will go into the subdirectory /rafs/lib/move as an example

Date: March 22, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 7 hr 0 min
Location: EB 1036
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met for our second R&D day.
Ran into a major problem with the robot. It now reboots randomly, so they are going to ship the robot back on Monday. This means we have to have our prototype done by Monday, March 25.
We did manage to get enough done to get the robot to move in a user-defined length square, with the robot only rebooting three times.
The code can be found in the code section on the website.

Date: March 24, 2002
Time: 7:00
Duration: 2 hr 50 min
Location: EB 1036
Attended by: Peter, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met to work on our third (and unscheduled) R&D day.
We worked on getting the gripper to work and refining the prototype before Monday, but the robot kept rebooting. We did manage to get the gripper to open and close, but that was all we could do.
We got frustrated and went home.
The code can be found in the code section on the website.

Date: March 25, 2002
Time: 4:00
Duration: 1 hr 00 min
Location: EB 1036
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We got the robot up and running.
Peter spent the morning getting the gripper to move up and down.
We showed Dr. White our prototype.

Date: March 25, 2002
Time: 7:30
Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Location: EB 1012
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met to get the robot performing its prototype on video while it was working properly, since they are not going to ship the robot until later this week.
The video can be found in the video section on the website.

Date: March 27, 2002
Time: 4:30
Duration: 1 hr 25 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We discussed the Design Document.
3 categories:

For testing purposes we will test one chair with one desk.
We will use color recognition (assuming operation will not be done in a dark room).
Color on chair will be at bottom of post.
Everyone is to write 15 pages of the Design Document by Monday.
Items to include in DD:
· Prototypes – J.D.
· Relationships – Brad

Date: March 29, 2002
Time: 9:30
Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Location: Dr. White’s office
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We talked to Dr. White about our relationships.
His thoughts we might implement:
· First two columns need detail on how to do the task
· Wish list – recognize chair without any color coding
· First category – mark every critical part of chair (20 stickers, for example)
· Second category – mark only one or two parts of chair
· Third category – mark none
· Find all empty desks first
· Mark all chairs not in position and empty desks before turning on robot
· Committed – manually place robot at chair or desk
· Assume that the stickers will not rub off
· Saw how we do the task, not just what
· Need some way of finding a path

Date: April 1, 2002
Time: 3:30
Duration: 2 hr 15 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We worked on combining the DD.
Matt decided to break up the flowchart into 4 main categories.
J.D. decided we need to talk about C*Forge and CodeWarrior.

Date: April 3, 2002
Time: 3:00
Duration: 2 hr 20 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We finished the DD!!!
Met with Dr. White at 4:20
Some of his thoughts for the presentation:
· Intro slide (paragraph)
· Slide to introduce people (names, roles, etc.)
· If there is a slide with all text, slides before and after should have images
· 25 slides max (try for 15-20)
· Too much text in previous slides
· Use bullets
· Use subtle sounds
· Picture of robot on some slides would be helpful
· Constant theme
· Decide what we will talk about and allocate number of slides for each topic and time
· Simply present what decisions are, not how we got to them
· Leave out wish list
· Limit text
· Dark blue with bright yellow text?
· Font size should be 20+, 16 absolute minimum (bold maybe)
· Page numbers, team name on each slide instead of top of every slide
· Ask questions about what kind of decisions they would make (more for faculty)
· Prototype does not have to be at the end

Date: April 8, 2002
Time: 4:15
Duration: 1 hr 0 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met and finished the comments for the prototype.
We talked about the slides:
· Coding standards (small portion – J.D.)
· State Diagram (5 min, at least - Peter)
· Class Diagram (2-5 min – Matt)
· Design to Schedule models (3-5 mins – Brad)
· Test Plan (1/2 slide – J.D.)
· Group roles/Intro (3-5 mins – Brad)
· Footer w/slide number, DD in middle
· Prototype (last – J.D.)
· Software tools (3 mins – Peter)
· Sequence Diagram (J.D.)
We will meet tomorrow night at 7:30 to make the slides.

Date: April 9, 2002
Time: 9:00
Duration: 2 hr 0 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We met for a while to work on the slides.
Everybody worked on the slides they are going to present, and we tried to make them consistent.

Date: April 10, 2002
Time: 3:00
Duration: 3 hr 0 min
Location: EB 2029
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We finished the slides, right at six.
We needed to add some sections, and make everything consistent.

Date: April 14, 2002
Time: 7:00
Duration: 3 hr 0 min
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: J.D.

Minutes:

We put our old code on the new robot that came in.
We tried to correct the code because it was an older version than the one we turned in.
We came to the conclusion that the robot does not turn correctly. When turning 90 degrees to the left (according to the code), it turns ~85 degrees, and when turning to the right, ~95 degrees.

CS 499

Date: August 20, 2002
Time: 6:00
Duration: 1 hr 15 min
Location: EB 1010
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

Change of roles: J.D. is now our team leader, and Peter our lead programmer.
Meeting plan: For now, we will meet every Tuesday/Thursday at 5:00 pm and during CS499 class, and Saturday at 1:00 pm..
We briefly discussed roles. The following roles were established:
1.) Brad will do minutes
2.) J.D. and Matt will take over website duties
Contingency Plan: In the event that we have a major robot failure (as we did last semester) one option would be to use the A.I. class robots (Lego Mindstorms) and have them move dollhouse chairs. This is an extreme case however.
Users Guide: How the user will interact with the system was discussed. It looks as if we will be using a large portion of what is already given to us in Saphira. This is especially true of the Tracking GUI. Matt Allen will take the lead on this issue.
We plan to meet with Andrew Lamonica (resident robot expert) on 8/23/02 Friday afternoon at 5pm. He will then show us the localization capabilities of the new software. Peter will contact Andrew to schedule.
Release 1 ideas:
-Free range movement and obstacle avoidance
-Beep on proximity
-Color coding (recognition)
Release 2 ideas:
-Localization
-Movement involving desks
A weekly meeting with Dr. White was proposed.
One daily planning day was suggested.
The decision was made to use MS Visual Studio as much as possible to avoid the pitfalls of learning the difficult Unix and Linux systems.
Other items:
-Matt and Brad will investigate free-range movement.
-Peter and J.D. will take care of color recognition.

Date: August 22, 2002
Time: 5:00
Duration: 2 hr 15 min
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

Met during class on 8/22/02 and discussed a schedule of events for our first release.
J.D. asked us all to contribute and up to date resume for our latest and greatest website.
In addition to the roles and responsibilities discussed on the meeting of 8/20/02, it was decided that Matt Allen and Brad White would take care of the movement portion of the project.
We have decided to expand our meeting schedule to include the hour before class (5:00 pm Tuesday and Thursday) in addition to the hour after class and also to meet at 1:00 pm on Saturday Afternoons (8/24/02 not withstanding, as we will all be working on our own this day at our homes).
The following schedule for release 1 was planned (see the releases page for more details):
We also met with Dr. White at the end of class and briefly discussed our releases for the semester. As a result of those discussions we realized that we should probably include some chair movement in release 2.

Date: August 27, 2002
Time: 5:00
Duration: 2 hr 15 min
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

All members did as much research as possible in their respective assigned fields.
One of the items read by all members was the CS225b course material at Stanford University. Items addressed in that document were:
-movement
-localization (introduction and concepts)
-Markov localization. (.pdf file)
Read as much material as we could from the ActivMedia website.
Peter and J.D. continued to work on website additions/revision/construction.
Printed and Read some other manuals and documentation.

Date: August 29, 2002
Time: 5:00
Duration: 2 hr 15 min
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Peter, Matt, J.D., Brad
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

Most of the time was spent on planning all 3 releases. After the meeting J.D. made some “high-level” Gantt charts for the all releases.
A test schedule was discussed.
Discussed Integration of all modules and timing.
Produced a detailed Gantt chart for release 1 (click here for more details).
Look at the Releases page for more details.

Date: August 31, 2002
Time: 1:00
Duration: 3 hr
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

Peter and J.D. continued their work on image processing. They were able to use A.C.T.S. to observer distinct colors using the robots camera.
Matt and Brad continued their work on movement. They were able to install the software to map the rooms and also build some “worlds” for the robot to travel in.

Date: September 3, 2002
Duration: 2 hr 30 min
Location: EB 1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

Minutes:

Discussed the possible approaches for using image processing. One will use sonar, the other will not. The approach that uses the sonar will still utilize the image processing to look for colors, but then uses the sonar to help understand the location of the robot in reference to the object detected. As the robot approaches closer to the target, the amount of color (area) on the screen will get larger, along with the sonar getting smaller. This way the robot will “know” if it is getting closer to the targeted chair.
Brad and Matt mapped EB 2029 (the senior project lab) and began to draw it out using the map software provided in ActivMedia’s basic suite.
We also went into much more detail in the detailed version of Release 1.

Date: September 5, 2002
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Location: EB1010
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D. Peter, Dr. White
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our meeting with Dr. White to discuss our current website and what improvements, additions, and subtractions we should make. Dr. White told us in general that we needed more graphical content (and later suggested we post our EB-2029 diagram) such as the robots we have at SIUE. He also had suggestions for the team biographies and resumes.

Date: September 7, 2002
Duration: 4 hours
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

Matt and Brad met in the mobile robotics lab and did research (reading manuals) and downloading and trying to learn ActivMedia’s software (Saphira, the simulator, Trainer, and Navigator) and developed sample code to compile and also Activity files. J.D. was also present, and Peter worked from home that day.

Date: September 10, 2002
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our regular Tuesday night meeting and included a full class meeting to discuss web development for the senior project groups. Also at this meeting some compiling and linking problems were worked out and further enhancements to the website were made for the 9/12/02 deadline.

Date: September 12, 2002
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Location: EB1010
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D. Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This included our regular class meeting and other how to items such as learning how to run an Xwindows session via solar.cs.siue.edu to connect to our robot. Also more coding development and documentation.

Date: September 15, 2002
Duration: 2 hours
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

The team met in the mobile robotics lab and worked on their respective parts of the program. A video was also taken of the robot recognizing a color and drawing itself toward it until it got within 500mm of the target.

Date: September 17, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB1010
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

At this meeting JD and Peter shared some personnel issues with Matt and Brad. JD and Peter had made contact with Dr. White about some issues and decided a plan of action to take for the next week (and after that the rest of the semester). Also taken care of was Peter showing everyone the full procedure to connect to and to test the robot.

Date: September 19, 2002
Duration: 5 hours
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

The team met in the mobile robotics lab and worked on their respective parts of the program. JD and Brad worked on an algorithm for moving a chair around an obstacle using sonar. Peter and Matt also worked on some issues regarding a return type of a Saphria sonar function. Apparently the function getClosestBox() returns an integer value and not a double. Unfortunately the compiler and all of Activ Media’s documentation and the g++ compiler claim that the return value is a double.

Date: September 21, 2002
Duration: 6 hours
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was more or less an informal meeting. Brad and Matt were implementing and testing the chair movement module in the atrium. Peter focused his time on object recognition items (and also integration of modules), and J.D. helped him, along with working on the website.

Date: September 23, 2002
Duration: 2.5 hours
Location: Atrium
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

At this meeting, Brad and Matt showed their progress on the movement module to Dr. White and also to the rest of the team. Before the meeting Matt and Brad set up their demo, ran it several times, and then Matt displayed some of his improved chair movement code that allowed for smoother movement on the robot. Peter and JD worked on the robots color tracking/image processing using some new colors of paper that Peter procured earlier in the day. Some of the new colors had a better prevention of “washout” than what had been used previously.

Date: September 24, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

The team met in the mobile robotics lab (per the norm) and discussed wrapping up the details for Release 1 which is due on Thursday 9/26. Also discussed were Details of Release 2 (who’s doing what, when thing are scheduled, etc.) Also a general plan for the slides for Thursday was drafted, and Matt implemented these using Microsoft Power Point. Also, Peter set up user privileges for other team members to use the camera on the robot and to do screen captures.

Date: September 26, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

RAFS team met before and after their 6:00 meeting with Dr. White. This day was the day that release 1 was due and we wrapped up everything we had to say and our slides before class that evening. Things seemed to go pretty well from what we all could tell. After the meeting we did an assessment of how we did and dove into what we would be working on for release 2. This is included what we were going to be doing as far as documents were concerned.

Date: September 28, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was our first post release 1 meeting and it focused on some of our main points for release 2. Per Dr. White’s suggestion, J.D. and I began working with the robot gripping a chair automatically. We were moderately successful, the gripper height set very well. Unfortunately we had some problems with the robot rolling up too closely to a chair and hitting the chair with the gripper (making the sound of a very expensive bang). However more research is needed (and we have 2 additional days budgeted too). Matt and Peter did some major work with localization and the laser on this day.

Date: October 1, 2002
Duration: 2 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting included our regular class meeting time where we discussed the documentation deliverables for release 2 and 3. We also met before and after class to discuss some items including (but not limited to) changes to documents already written, discussion of localization, discussion of laser, etc. After that we adjourned to work on our own. Peter and Matt continued to work in the Mobile Robotics lab.

Date: October 3, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our regular Thursday meeting. Worked on release 2 items such as obstacle avoidance with a chair. Research makes it look like we will not be able to use the gradient method while we are pushing chairs. The team also revised some items to the release 2 schedule. Lastly some ideas were put down on paper for release 3.

Date: October 5, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

On this Saturday meeting Brad and J.D. worked together on the obstacle avoidance with a chair and designed the algorithm and tested it for setting a new heading. Matt and Peter continued their work with localization and merged it with the object recognition code.

Date: October 8, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was one of our regular Tuesday meetings. We worked on what we have been working on all along for Release 2. Peter & Matt continued to work with their map from scan studio and fixed the robot orientation problem with it facing east. Brad and JD added to their current chair placement and obstacle avoidance code and documentation.

Date: October 10, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

On this Thursday night Brad and JD worked on simple chair placement without using obstacle avoidance. Matt and Peter tested their current work and downloaded the new version of Saphira 8.1.8 which has the linking problems for dll’s fixed on Windows computers. This will be a great help to our project. Wish we had it sooner.

Date: October 15, 2002
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Location: EB-1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was the last group meeting before the Release 2 presentation. The team prepared slides and assigned estimated percentages to whom did what for the Release. Lastly some final checks of the deliverables were made.

Date: October 17, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB 1010, EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting included our presentation of Release 2 deliverables to Dr. White. Things seemed to go pretty well… Also after the presentation we talked about what we should do for a questionnaire and when the next time we will be meeting. Release 3 is going to be the big one.

Date: October 22, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB-1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was our regular Tuesday meeting and included a class meeting from 6:00 to 7:15 as well. In the class we discussed each groups Social Implications Document. Before and after class the team met to discuss documents they are preparing and also to discuss how their coding projects were going. Matt and JD continued to work with the gripper. Brad and Peter continued to pursue parallel development in placing a chair while using the laser for obstacle avoidance.

Date: October 24, 2002
Duration: 4 hours
Location: EB-1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our regular Thursday meeting and some coding items and documents were being wrapped up. As of this writing, we will be writing our own obstacle avoidance code and not using the gradient path finding. The reason for this is the robot treats the chair in its gripper as an obstacle and tries to get a path around the chair. The chair gripping module is almost done, pending some overlooked problems. The User’s Guide is ready for proofreading, the questionnaire is also ready for proofreading, and the Social Implications document is well under way.

Date: October 26, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB-2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was a Saturday meeting where we began the long arduous task of integration of all the existing modules. Our original plan was not able to be met exactly causing us to take a slightly different approach. Fortunately we were successful in our initial integration endeavors.

Date: October 29, 2002
Duration: 4 + hours
Location: EB-2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was a Wednesday meeting and included time for integrating & testing of modules and also doing further writing of documents. The entire team was present for about 4 and ½ hours.This integration stuff is killer. We will be presenting our project/findings to the CS490 class tomorrow in order to get information to build our customer feedback document.

Date: October 31, 2002
Duration: 3 hours +
Location: EB1022 + EB 2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This Thursday meeting included time to demo our project to the CS490 class. Everything seemed to go OK, however our robot is very shy and gets stage fright. We did get it to push a chair to the desk and showed the video of it working. We also received some feedback via the questionnaire developed by Matt (& Dr. White). We will begin to look at these on Saturday.

Date: November 2, 2002
Duration: 4 hours
Location: EB1022
Attended by: Brad, Matt, J.D., Peter
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our Saturday meeting. We continued to work on documents and began to analyze the questionnaire we answers we got back. We did not get many of the answers we were expecting. First it was very disturbing to see how many students in a 400 level CS class did not understand our presentation or what we were trying to do. Also, some students did not fill out a questionnaire. However we did have some positive and constructive criticism from the students and we will further discuss this analysis in our customer feedback document.

Date: November 5, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB-2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This meeting was our regular Tuesday meeting. We spent our time on further integrating the code modules for our Release 3 presentation to Dr. White that is due on November 7th. Also we spent time on reviewing and final composition of documents

Date: November 7, 2002
Duration: 4 hours
Location: EB-1022 + EB-2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our regular Thursday meeting. We wrapped up Release 3 and presented what we had accomplished to Dr. White. Things seemed to go very well.

Date: November 12, 2002
Duration: 3 hours
Location: EB-1022 + EB-2029
Attended by: Brad, Matt, Peter, J.D.
Minutes taken by: Brad

This was our regular Tuesday meeting. We spent our time readying for the presentation to the CS499 class on Thursday and also spent some more time on our postmortem document.