Day 3: Pitching our initial product ideas


We got up at 7:30 a.m. and ate breakfast at the youth hostel. Then we departed on our daily hike to the school building.

Our First Pitch

In the morning, we had to pitch the concept ideas we had brainstormed over the previous days. This pitch had to be done using story-driven design, meaning it had to be a kind of story depicting a user who uses our conceptual robot. Everyone received feedback on how they could improve their pitch, such as making better use of story-driven development and making the presentation more engaging.

Making Our Robot Autonomous

After everyone had presented, we had an input session about more advanced computer vision techniques using OpenCV and how to use LiDAR.

Until now, we had learned to steer the robot manually, but now it was time to make it more autonomous using computer vision and LiDAR. Computer vision is the ability to “interpret” a video signal, and LiDAR is a device that takes distance measurements around the robot.

To accomplish computer vision, we were introduced to OpenCV, a library that helps with image processing for computer vision. We learned how to use various techniques to better detect the race tracks, such as blurring the image to reduce noise and masking the image to isolate a certain color (the gray road, for example).

In the afternoon, we continued working on the technical track of our project. Getting started with ROS was challenging at first, but after getting used to the framework, it became easier and more enjoyable to work with. Some teams were already starting to succeed in getting their TurtleBot to drive the first race track, called Sternforemost.

We ended the day by going back to our hostel. Once everyone was there, we all went out and grabbed something to eat for dinner. That night didn’t differ much from the others; we talked a little and did our own things before going back to bed.

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