Building Manager/January 31, 2011

Accomplishments

• Nate: part way through initial warehouse implementation. API review last week.

• Jeremy: Project/Building Manager/multimaster design document in progress. Started implementing parts of documents, but needs more discussion of capabilities and tasks.

• Ken: draft of app/bootstrap/interface layer
• Melonee/Tully [Create]: HBRC demo/presentation. 2dnav now working on turtlebot. Problem: Localization diverges when it gets too far from walls. Going to try and use cheap IMU, work with James. Single-axis. Documented dashboard and Vijay finished up board, waiting for it to arrive.
• Dave: maps are displaying in rve as well as stubby walls for obstacles. Worked a bit on laptop-docking addition to turtlebot. Need solution for changing different barrel adapters.

• Ethan [Pano/Create]: working on StreetView-like-app for turtlebot. Have C++-based viewer.

• Bill: Have RIDE working with PyQt. Mostly worked on API review for warehouse and also integrating street view viewer into RIDE.

• Gil: works with multirobot in stage. Can bring up two separate nav stacks and command them separately. Need to add separate debs to our own repo?
• Brian: collected data on Kinect-based localization for turtlebot

This week

• Jeremy: workign on initial implementation of multimaster. Arrange meeting for apps/tasks.
• Bill: figure out migration timeline for transition to RVE. Get working with real robot. Look at what's being published in this area.
• Mel/Tully: diagnose damaged turtlebot. Create rosinstall and other packaging.
• Gil: need to clean up terminology and design of underlying architecture, e.g. 'tasks'. Need to figure out where to do integration, e.g. w/ or w/o warehouse, rve.
• Ethan: integrating with RIDE team to do on-demand capture. Working on inter-pano navigation.
• Dave: working on rve to get two views of same scenario.
• Ken: Building Manager presentation on Wed.

Discussion

Apps/tasks: Jeremy raised this issue as it has been necessary to resolve what are apps, what are tasks, and how we run them in order to move forward with multimaster work. An app view, roughly, is the top-level program, whereas a task is one of many tasks that might be sequenced by such a program. We had a 30 minute discussion on apps vs. tasks, multi-tasking (concurrency) vs. single-tasking. There is not a consensus yet, and this warrants further discussion. Ken presented a strawman architecture and proposal for 'capabilities', which will be circulated later and will be critique.