The "Fix is In" -- Docking Failure Fix that is

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GoPi5Go-Dave has been managing his docking and undocking autonomously with ROS 2 Humble for 17 days now and has suffered a few docking failures. (I attributed most of them to my wife bumping Dave when she looks out the window for squirrels). I increased his docking success rate by increasing the speed he backs onto the dock, but today another failure occurred with similar presentation.

If Dave does not back from exactly centered to the dock, the angle keeps one contact just a little short of mating.

I was able to add a /fixdock service to the docking_node, which will back another centimeter, and added a “docking_failure” state to the dave_node to call the /fixdock service when needed.

Quick testing results were good, we’ll see if the “Fix is in” for real.

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Didn’t you add a centering guide like the one I suggested for Carl?

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Yes, Dave has a shorter, more restrictive version than Carl’s:

GoPi5Go-Dave_Aruco_Dock_Marker
GoPi5Go-Dave_Aruco_Dock_Marker1820Ă—3024 217 KB

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Maybe the alignment slot needs to be longer so that Dave has a better chance of being centered when he docks?

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I’ve been checking every morning for over a month now, hoping to see a docking failure and a successful “fix”. Finally I see Dave had a problem docking and the fix worked!

2024-10-22 15:34|dave_node.py| ---- GoPi5Go-Dave ROS 2 Undocking, Charge Current 96 mA   12.1v after 2.5 h charging

2024-10-22 18:14|dave_node.py| ---- GoPi5Go-Dave ROS 2 Docking : failure at battery 10.1v after 2.7 h playtime 
2024-10-22 18:14|dave_node.py| ---- GoPi5Go-Dave ROS 2 Docking 1179 : success at battery 10.1v after 2.7 h playtime 
2024-10-22 18:14|dave_node.py| ---- Successful docking - odometry reset to {0,0,0,1}

I was expecting Dave might be ready to test the fix when I noticed him “playing” at an angle:

2024-10-21 10:44|[logMaintenance.py.main]** Dave is angled right at least 5 degrees **
2024-10-21 10:58|dave_node.py| ---- GoPi5Go-Dave ROS 2 Docking 1173 : success at battery 10.1v after 2.7 h playtime 
2024-10-21 10:58|dave_node.py| ---- Successful docking - odometry reset to {0,0,0,1}

Bit of a long test cycle.

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:pray:

Let’s see what happens. . .  Or, as a Jewish friend of mine said many years ago - “From your lips to God’s ears!”

I’m rootin’ for ya!

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Looks like an interesting stasis possibly: failure is happening more regularly with successful fixes:

2024-09-28 12:41|docking failure at 10.1 volts, attempting fix - spoken: True

- no failures for 3 weeks, then all of a sudden 
  one out of every six dockings is a failure and successful fix?

2024-10-21 00:21|docking failure at 10.1 volts, attempting fix - spoken: True
2024-10-22 18:14|docking failure at 10.1 volts, attempting fix - spoken: True
2024-10-23 15:19|docking failure at 10.1 volts, attempting fix - spoken: True

Perhaps I should program his volume to be louder.

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