Planning Rework and ISR Technical Consultation

This week, we restructured our internal planning to reflect the reality of upcoming deadlines and development challenges. We met with researchers from the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR), who provided technical feedback on our protocol design and helped validate some key decisions.

We learned more about the limitations of LoRa, especially its low data rate (around 8 kbps), which restricts the size and frequency of data packets. We also discussed antenna performance, and how signal quality can be influenced by positioning, orientation, and tuning of the spreading factor (SF).

One key insight was that video transmission, while ideal, might not be realistically achievable in field conditions. Therefore, we began exploring fallback strategies, including the use of compressed JPEG images, short audio clips, or even simple binary markers to simulate visual confirmation of targets.

This week was important not just for refining our expectations, but also for improving our implementation plan with a more realistic, field-adapted approach.