I wanted to be able to get information back from Google Earth. It’s already easy to plot information on Google Earth, but getting information back, like the GPS coordinates under the mouse pointer, was another story. Well, I slaved myself to my desk for a few days and figured it out. I created a sample VI program that displays the GPS coordinates of the Mouse over the globe, and captures the coordinates on a left mouse click. It then feeds them back into Google Earth as a point.

My SAGAR project has gotten to a point where I would like to document the system design through a series of detailed posts.

First I’ll show the new interface, and talk about how it communicates with SAGAR.

Ok, so I’m a little overexcited. I just got back from watching SAGAR complete it’s first autonomous mission. I just finished coding the navigation functions and couldn’t wait till the next day to test. Attached is an image of the mission it ran.

I used a Ardupilot program to generate the mission file with waypoints, convert it to a hex file using gcc, and I manually flash that into the Axon’s EEPROM memory. When SAGAR comes online, I give it a command to scan the mission file in memory, then I command it to run the mission.

I have been asked by a few people how SAGAR is going, so I guess I need to do some updates more often. Anyway, SAGAR was shelved for a while. The last tests of the closed loop heading controller showed I had something messing with the compass readings. Further tests concluded that my batteries were biasing my compass.

Well, I finally have gotten around to posting about my current project, Sagar! (The name might be changed if i come up with a better one) Basically, in an effort to better understand the technology I use at my job in the Navy, I am building a robot from scratch. My hope is in the end to have a robot that can be driven remotely, or drive itself with the aid of a GPS and inertial navigation system as well as avoid obstacles and reroute around them. I want it to be able to ‘record’ a route while being driven remotely, then be able to ‘replay’ the path without any assistance.