Proposal

[Joyce Poon <poonj@ecf.utoronto.ca>]

Onto another piece of admin crap -- our proposal (due 2nd week of school).

We have had a lot of ideas and there is a lot of info.  We should start
crystallizing some of the key concepts and think about what we
"officially" want to do.

Breaking down into the 3 subsystems (I'm just going to put down things
that come to my mind now, pls add to the list if you see anything
missing):

A) Electromech
Since Cindy just got back, she should spend some time thinking about this.
- structure, materials 
- motors (diff types), gearing
- differential drive for turning (calibration, design)
- power sys (type of battery? general idea of circuit that you'll need?)

B) Interface :)
Sensory Devices
- need to build beacon & detectors (very likely to be IR)
- IR will be modulated 
- IR range will have to be somehow maximized
- speed feedback using either Hall sensors or IR (I think I have a rough
idea on how to implement speed feedback using IR now)
- Object detectors (which are just switches)
- do we need to detect when the robot has stalled? (if yes, we might need
a motor current sensor)
- ? look-ahead sensors using ultrasound ?

Other Circuitry
- circuitry to control motors
- analog to digital conversion & vice-versa
- regulate voltages/currents for proper functioning of sensors/motors/comp
- may require surge suppressors, fuses etc. to accomplish the above goal
- I think it is best to power chips & the comp using a separate power
source (ie don't share battery with the EM sys)
- clocking

C) Comp
- What type of processor do you plan to use, Tim?  The one provided by
Malone or something else?
- programming lang
- map construction
- implementation of tactics
- sorting out diff sensory inputs, and producing good outputs
- the sensor error issue (I think the Rice U website describes some ways
in which the programs can check for errors & minimize the accumulation of
errors.)
- clocking 


Other ideas that we should (?) include in the proposal:
- extra transmitters?
- look-ahead sensors?
- how specific do we have to be about our tactics (things like moving
obstacles around...)

I think there's a lot more pts than this, but I'll stop for now.  

Again, pls add to the list if you see anything missing or if you see any
mistakes.  Oh yeah, we need some diagrams too.  Does he want circuit
schematics as well?

Joyce :)