The USB battery showed up today and I dug up an IMU from my parts bin (I knew it was around here somewhere!) so the robot is parts-complete today. I've done none of the wiring yet, but this is a good start. I managed to get everything on the chassis, which was no small feat figuring out where and how to mount things; I really wanted to make sure the IMU would be oriented usefully (X-forward), but it didn't quite work out that way, so I have to remember that it's mounted backwards (e.g. positive X to the rear).

Not a huge deal. Here is an ordered list of initial work:

Milestone 1: movement/somatic

• Goal: coherent motion
• The four drive motor somatic processes
• The motor part of the movement cognitive process

Milestone 2: movement/sensory

• Goal: sense of direction
• IMU sensory process
• Add IMU into the movement cognitive process fusion

Milestone 3: crash stop

• Goal: don’t try to keep going if the robot can’t keep moving
• Lidar sensory process
• Add lidar into movement fusion
• Add basic crash stop into movement - don’t service requests to go forward if the robot can’t

Research further work

• What does mapping look like with a single lidar?
• How does proprioception work?
• How does navigation work?

So the first thing to do will be to wire up the motors, make sure I can talk to the motor hat, and all that. It may turn out that the motors all have to be set at the same time with the hat, so I might have to make those four processes a single process.