Starting off for SHAASTRA 2007

Its pretty interesting that I overcame my laziness for another post here .I promised to myself that I will post regularly (see my previous post) .I was also inspired my Ganesh my friend and also my school mate who has renewed his old blog (meet him here) to give it a new look .And I also grew a little jealous by the fact that he was getting about 30 hits a day :D .Inspired by all these factors I am back here again .

I am starting off for shaastra 2007 . I am planning to compete in all the three robotics event .
This time I am pairing up with Prassana my class mate and his cousin and his friend Siddarth for the mission mars event.

Mission Mars
We are planning to start building the robot for mission maPost Optionsrs event .The task of the robot is to autonomously navigate a surface similar to mars .We had long discussions regarding the design of the robot .
Finally we made the following conclusions about the design
1.Track drive for the robot .
Since this the best available simple method to navigate a rugged terrain and also we have the belts ,sprockets and boggie wheels for construction which they used for their staircase climber in shaastra 2006.

2.Distance measurement sensors
We planned to implement a real time distance measurement and comparison algorithm to navigate the terrain .Sharp IR sensors seemed to be a good choice .But calibrating them is
surely gonna be a challenge .As the ADC pin give a o/p ranging from - 0.3 to 0.3 volts .I have
to Google and learn a lot to do that .

3.Image processing
Since Siddarth had previously worked in Image Processing .We have also planned to implement
this with image processing method with a TMS32054x Processor .But I guess the problem here lies with connecting the camera to the chip .We have to figure out a way to do that .

Because I have CAT this week .Oh well please don't think CAT that I have mentioned as the common aptitude test for Gods sake ,I am not a MBA freak.This CAT is called as Continuous Assessment Test the great method my college uses to find out how a student
is performing and award him marks accordingly which is accompanied with partiality and grudge . Well I guess I am deviating off topic .Getting back ......I wont be working on it until Saturday .

wish me good luck .I want to win this event .

Some things that I want to remind myself to do it this week
Finish eeemaniacs .(The site that I am building for my class mates.)
Get the 3.2 CC engine running .For the hovercraft event.
And study something for CAT exams .