Individual Progress Report

Description

The Individual Progress Report (IPR) is a chance to put your contributions to the team's progress in writing. The report will discuss not only the components and subsystems you have personally been responsible for, but what components you have helped work on as well. It is important to talk about the relation between your work and your teammates' work as well.

Requirements and Grading

This report should be 5-12 pages of your own work. This means that you cannot take paragraphs/text from your Design Review document, since that was a collaborative effort. The IPR Grading Rubric describes what we look for in grading this assignment. The requirements are expanded on below:

  1. General: Concise writing is encouraged, but it is important that all pertinent information is conveyed. All figures should be labeled and formatted consistently.
  2. Formatting: Please refer to the Final Report Guidelines for general writing guidelines, since the format of this report should be very similar to that of the final report. Note that each component of the Final Report may be tailored to the parts of the project the individual has been active in.
  3. Introduction: First, discuss what portion of the system you have been active in designing connects to which portion of a different subsystem, and how these interact to complete an overall objective. Then discuss what you have accomplished, what you are currently working on, and what you still have left to do.
  4. Design: Discuss the design work you have done so far. It is expected that you have done calculations and/or found relevant equations, created circuits for your parts of the project, and simulated / drawn schematics for your parts. You may have already, at a high level, discussed how your part fits into the rest of the project, but you should expand on the technical details and interface between your module(s) and the other modules of the project.
  5. Verification: Testing and verification is also very important. Make sure you describe each test that was performed and its procedure in detail, and give quantitative, meaningful results. Also describe tests that have yet to be performed. We should be convinced that if all your tests will pass, your part of the project will work.
  6. Conclusion: Discuss a plan and timeline for completing your responsibilities and your project as a whole. Also explain the ethical considerations of your project by consulting the IEEE Code of Ethics, ACM Code of Ethics, or another relevant Code of Ethics.
  7. Citations: You need citations. Cite sources for equations, Application Notes you referenced in your design, and any literature you used to help design or verify your work. If you checked something from another course's lecture slides, Google'd for things related to your project, or anything similar, then you have something you need to cite. At the very least, since you have talked about the ethical considerations of your project as it relates to a published code of ethics (e.g., IEEE or ACM), you should cite those!

Submission and Deadlines

The IPR should be submitted on canvas in PDF format by the deadline listed on the Course Calendar.

Decentralized Systems for Ground & Arial Vehicles (DSGAV)

Mingda Ma, Alvin Sun, Jialiang Zhang

Featured Project

# Team Members

* Yixiao Sun (yixiaos3)

* Mingda Ma (mingdam2)

* Jialiang Zhang (jz23)

# Problem Statement

Autonomous delivery over drone networks has become one of the new trends which can save a tremendous amount of labor. However, it is very difficult to scale things up due to the inefficiency of multi-rotors collaboration especially when they are carrying payload. In order to actually have it deployed in big cities, we could take advantage of the large ground vehicle network which already exists with rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. The roof of an automobile has plenty of spaces to hold regular size packages with magnets, and the drone network can then optimize for flight time and efficiency while factoring in ground vehicle plans. While dramatically increasing delivery coverage and efficiency, such strategy raises a challenging problem of drone docking onto moving ground vehicles.

# Solution

We aim at tackling a particular component of this project given the scope and time limitation. We will implement a decentralized multi-agent control system that involves synchronizing a ground vehicle and a drone when in close proximity. Assumptions such as knowledge of vehicle states will be made, as this project is aiming towards a proof of concepts of a core challenge to this project. However, as we progress, we aim at lifting as many of those assumptions as possible. The infrastructure of the lab, drone and ground vehicle will be provided by our kind sponsor Professor Naira Hovakimyan. When the drone approaches the target and starts to have visuals on the ground vehicle, it will automatically send a docking request through an RF module. The RF receiver on the vehicle will then automatically turn on its assistant devices such as specific LED light patterns which aids motion synchronization between ground and areo vehicles. The ground vehicle will also periodically send out locally planned paths to the drone for it to predict the ground vehicle’s trajectory a couple of seconds into the future. This prediction can help the drone to stay within close proximity to the ground vehicle by optimizing with a reference trajectory.

### The hardware components include:

Provided by Research Platforms

* A drone

* A ground vehicle

* A camera

Developed by our team

* An LED based docking indicator

* RF communication modules (xbee)

* Onboard compute and communication microprocessor (STM32F4)

* Standalone power source for RF module and processor

# Required Circuit Design

We will integrate the power source, RF communication module and the LED tracking assistant together with our microcontroller within our PCB. The circuit will also automatically trigger the tracking assistant to facilitate its further operations. This special circuit is designed particularly to demonstrate the ability for the drone to precisely track and dock onto the ground vehicle.

# Criterion for Success -- Stages

1. When the ground vehicle is moving slowly in a straight line, the drone can autonomously take off from an arbitrary location and end up following it within close proximity.

2. Drones remains in close proximity when the ground vehicle is slowly turning (or navigating arbitrarily in slow speed)

3. Drone can dock autonomously onto the ground vehicle that is moving slowly in straight line

4. Drone can dock autonomously onto the ground vehicle that is slowly turning

5. Increase the speed of the ground vehicle and successfully perform tracking and / or docking

6. Drone can pick up packages while flying synchronously to the ground vehicle

We consider project completion on stage 3. The stages after that are considered advanced features depending on actual progress.

Project Videos