The team made steady progress this week as we continued refining both the mechanical and sensing components of our system while preparing for several key milestones in our development timeline. Building on feedback from recent discussions, we focused our efforts on technical improvements, documentation, and early-stage testing that will inform the next phase of the project.
One of the primary accomplishments this week was drafting the SLDR, which will serve as an important reference point for aligning our design choices, subsystem responsibilities, and project direction. We also met with Dr. Stubbs to review our overall system architecture and motor requirements. This discussion helped clarify several design considerations and provided guidance for the mechanical and control decisions we will finalize in the coming weeks.
On the prototyping side, we began purchasing the remaining components needed to automate the current prototype. These parts will allow us to progress from manual operation toward a more complete representation of the intended system behavior. In addition, we received and assembled new catheters for testing and were able to verify that the prototype continues to function mechanically as expected.
We also made adjustments to the cooking fixture to address concerns raised during the previous meeting. These modifications will support improved alignment and should contribute to more consistent handling of the catheter components. In parallel, we began preliminary testing aimed at detecting electrodes within catheter images. These early tests will help guide improvements to the image processing pipeline and build toward more consistent and reliable computer vision performance.
Looking ahead to next week, our priorities include completing the SLDR, acquiring the remaining parts before the holiday period, improving the vision system’s performance on lower quality images, and continuing iteration on the cooking fixture based on the week’s feedback. The team will not be meeting next week due to the Thanksgiving break.
Here is a picture of our new computer vision progress:
