Week of 10/29

Well the requirements document is all done :)  This week we focused more on the math and the intensity plot.

Tuesday, we spent some time on the intensity plot.  I had been overcomplicating it and had been looking at the opencv histogram function.  However, we determined to pursue by looping through a row of pixels (the row is just halfway down the image) and getting the intensity.  We tried using the red frame piece we had previously generated, but the channel we were testing had only 0's.  I think the only channel is the 1st (s[0].value) but it would only contain a 0 or 1 depending on if the hsv is in the range we specified.  We then tried with hsv and got some data.  Tyler furthered it to an excel plot and Thursday we plotted the laser line in a dark room.

Tuesday was also spent in a lengthy meeting with Dr. Wolff discussing the mathematics and starting to work out an order of the operations we will be performing.  I wrote out some things Wednesday morning on our board from what we had discussed and Thursday we worked through some of it.  We were able to Skype Grady as he was working at the time.  This was a way to communicate without him actually in the room.  We struggled some (especially on how to determine the coordinates of the laser line when determining the laser plane, until finally figuring out that the line lies on a plane and thus can determine the world coordinates in that plane's coordinate system).  Tyler is at a disadvantage not having taken linear algebra, but I am trying to explain some things as we go so he isn't lost as much and can feel more included.  We still have some math to figure out, particulary the ray to a point and the ray-plane intersection to determine the coordinate in one of the coordinate systems (both the ray and the plane must be in the same coordinate system when doing the intersection).

All three of us are going to review the math portion of the Siggraph document.  I read through this already, but it has been some time ago and it will be helpful to refresh.

I think we are making headway and I hope we can keep plowing through.  It sounds like Grady has a way to move forward on the hardware side of things as well.