This week, Gatormatix has been focusing on getting ready to present for Prototype Inspection Day (PID) on Tuesday. Getting our hands on a drone body, LiDAR, and other hardware components has given us the ability to have a semi-functional working prototype to present. Preliminary testing has begun on each individual component, to ensure the team understands how those sub-systems work individually before trying to tie them all together.

One of the team members has made great strides testing a Visual SLAM algorithm with a single camera on Jetson Nano. Although a single camera was used in these tests, increasing the number of cameras will increase the accuracy of the data and hence, also the algorithm. Based on the knowledge that we will be able to use this flight computer for our project, we have gone ahead and ordered a Jetson Orin Nano for ourselves, our first official purchase! We are starting to move past the research stage and want to get some hands-on testing with the parts we will be using. We are aware that the task at hand is not simple, so preliminary testing and ordering parts early will be essential for us to meet key expectations by the deadlines. We are putting together the prototype over the next few days and recording videos to show at PID. The team is eager to keep working on the drone together and get it up and running!