Mobilising a platform on a hardpan environment so rainwater can efficiently be caught and used by the soil.
Image Alteration
First the image received from the depthcamera is read. This image is in grayscale and makes it very capable for a Canny edge filter. Using the edited image, bounding boxes are drawn based on the now amplified edges.
Math
After the bounding boxes are drawn a calculation can be done based on the view of the camera where the next obstacle is. The result of this calculation is a vector to the next object. Adding this to the position of the AMP at that moment, results in the real coordinates of the obstacle.
A*
GreenDigger supplied a map of where the planned excavation spots would be. Using this, the next goal could be determined and a simple pathfinding algorithm could be chosen where one start position and one goal was used. Since we know the position of the goal, the heuristicly informed A* was chosen. This is a fast algorithm which uses heuristic function to plan the best route.
PID
Now that a path has been generated by the A* algorithm we are able to drive the path it created. This is done by first turning towards the next vertex and then driving there. This method is chosen because as little errors as possible can be made using this approach and the machine will not drive large distances.