It’s May Day! In other news, the
Codebusters team has had their weekly meeting with our client, and we are happy
to report that our progress on Sumobot Simulator 2013 has been extremely well
received so far. At this point, we estimate that we have completed
approximately 75% of the core programming, with completion of the “Simulation”
tab and optimization being our immediate priorities. Here’s a list that we
believe provides a good summation of the state of the program up to this point:
General
-The program state is currently nearing the “pre-alpha” stage,
with stable daily builds being committed to Dropbox.
-Proper program versioning conventions are being/in the
process of being adhered to!
-Various graphical improvements that increase the overall
user-friendliness of the program has been made and approved by the client.
Optimization
-While the current builds of the simulator are utilizing up
to 75% of the available CPU cycles (on a 1.0 GHz dual core AMD C-50 CPU) during
idle, we are aiming to reduce that usage down to less than 50% through various
code optimizations.
- Furthermore, our R&D team is currently researching
optimization methods through the use of multi-threading,
which would assign specific tasks to each available core on a system and
potentially free up system resources.
-In addition, multithreading would allow for the efficient
utilization of hardware technologies such as asymmetric “Dual-channel” and
“Quad-Channel” memory (RAM), which would enable each CPU core access to their
own independent 64-bit memory controller (and again, reducing resource
competition and the amount of memory faults to the page file)
GUI
-The client has suggested that default values for each of
the sumobot’s properties are to be present into the corresponding input boxes
at program start up, in order to increase user convenience.
-Moving graphs displaying the properties of the robot while
it is in motion (such as its acceleration and velocity from moment to moment),
will be implemented on the side panel with accompanying value readouts for
each.
-A button or switch will allow for the user to specify the
robot’s current state (whether it is in the simulation mode or not)
- Another series of switches will control the independent
movement of each wheel (either in the ON or OFF state)
- Thus far, the simulation will consist of a side view of the sumobot as it traverses down a 10 meter path (which will loop), although this is subject to change.
- Thus far, the simulation will consist of a side view of the sumobot as it traverses down a 10 meter path (which will loop), although this is subject to change.
-The user will further be able to specify the mass of a block that the robot will push along a variety of surfaces (each with varying coefficients of friction). The default mass will be set to 2 kg.
-Lastly, our graphics team is hard at work with the visual aspect of the simulator, creating the many textures and images that will be required to implement all the features of the "Simulation" tab.
-Lastly, our graphics team is hard at work with the visual aspect of the simulator, creating the many textures and images that will be required to implement all the features of the "Simulation" tab.
Overall, these have been a very
productive couple weeks for the Codebusters Team, and while we have undoubtedly
encountered a few roadblocks during this time (as common with any project of
this size), good progress is nonetheless being made towards achieving a
complete build of the simulator. Kudos to the team!
The next progress meeting with our client is scheduled for a
week from Friday, and we hope to return with more good news then!
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