This week I mostly worked on modifying the DR-PRM code to work with group robots. DR-PRM (Dynamic Regions Probabilistic Roadmap) uses topological skeletons to guide the sampling of PRM. The lab has had success with the code that works for a single robot, and can get some multi-robot solutions by running the individual robot code through CBS, but they want a more elegant piece of code that can call both individual and group robots for DR-PRM.

This is my first summer working with C++ and also my first time working with such a large library so learning how to debug has been a bit of a steep learning curve. However, I think I’m making progress. Most recently I solved (I think) a bug with the skeleton not generating and am now dealing with another runtime error. Courtney has been so generous in helping me.

I learned this week that the Bridge Test Sampler needed some additional work as well. The interface of valid/invalid samples referred to whether or not nodes were in free configuration space. Now, valids are configurations that pass the Bridge Test and invalids are those that don’t. However, this makes writing tests for the code a bit more difficult as the ends of the bridges are not returned by the test, and as the bridge ends are randomly generated, it is difficult to test if the valid configurations truly pass the Bridge Test. However, I’ve completed tests as best I can with the current interface.

I also started working on my research poster.