Spheero Design Document – Morrissp, Petersat, Zirnheldj
Overview
Our goal for this final is to turn the Spheero into a sort-of pet dog, making him follow around while we walk. Using the accelerometer and gyroscope, we will make the Spheero follow a person using their phone(their phone in their hand) . We plan on having two screens – one to connect to the spheero, and another for any settings changes and an on/off button for the app. There is a lot we can do with this app once we get the motion working correctly, such as adding graphics to view an actual Dog and giving him animations. This would only be done after we get the motion working.
Risks/Hurdles
In theory we should be able to using the accelerometer and gyroscope readings to tell the Spheero which direction to go, how fast, and for how long. Detecting our walking movements well will depend on how accurate of readings we get and how sensitive the phone is. Nobody in our group has ever worked on something like this, so there are probably numerous problems we have yet to encounter.
Division of Labor
The first thing we will need to do is set up a program to take readings from the phone and communicate with the Spheero in a background task. Dan has done most of this work during the class time given on 12/11.
Next we will need to be able to use the data we are given from the phone and calculate how far the spheero should go, at what speed, and in what direction. This will be the tricky part of the project. Everyone will be working on this, but more specifically Anders and Sean. A lot of this work will be generating test data and figuring out the details in how movement changes the data the phone gets from it.