CS460 Project 4: Chickenbot

Due: In class demo: Tuesday Dec 11th: Project reports (hardcopy) due by 4pm Friday Dec 14.

Introduction:

We are running out of time as the semester winds down, so you are going to build your last robot on the back of your current solution. You will design (probably as an extension to your current robot) a robot which will act like a virtual chicken.

So what does that mean?

Your robot should have several behaviors.

It should normally be running around looking for "food" (in our case, due to limits on the sensors available, that will mean light.
If it spots the "food", the robot should try to go to the food and when close, play a happy eating tune.
Your robot should avoid obsticles. (running into things will reduce your score)
Your robot should run from people chasing it.

if the robot chicken gets cornered, defined as chased into an area from which there is no way to navigate out, then your robot should stop, play a sad tune and end program.

Normally the chickenbot should be wandering around looking for food, however avoiding being caught should take precidence. When the bot finds itself too close to an obsticle (possibly a person with a "chicken catcher") it should abandon the light finding in favor of running away.

Your demo will include the following tests

Can your robot go to and stop near the light and play the tune when placed at a 90 degree angle about 6 feet away with no obsticles.
does your robot navigate around obsticles properly
Does your robot get herded when an object approaches it. (note you will probably have to use all four IR sensors and may try extending touch sensors further out using a modified whisker sensors.

We'll be demoing this on the last day just before a review session.

The Project report

The project report is a report of what you tried to do, what you did, what you learned and what you accomplished. To make my correcting easier, let me give you guidlines on what I'd like to see in it. Make sure you use section headings to make each section easy to find.

Introduction

this is where you explain the problem you wer trying to solve and why it is relevent

Robot design

Here tell me what sort of robot you designed (in hardware). Tell me what worked and what did not work. Discuss what you learned based on what worked and what did not.

Software design

Here discuss what sort of control program you built. Again tell me what worked and what did not. Discuss what you learned about robot control software from your experience. Discuss your approach and its relevence to both the current task at hand and the general problem of robots acting in the world.

Evaluate your robot

Fro both design robot and software design, consider the four standards we are using to evaluate a robotic architecture and consider how your robot meets each of them. For niche targetability, include your robot's actual performance in the demo.

Concuding discussion

Summarize what you learned. Consider the following target audience: next year's robotics students. In this section, summarize from the preceding sections all of the worthwhile dos and don'ts that you discovered in doing this lab. It is not really relevent that your robot did really great unless you tell the reader why. Think about what you would have liked to know when you first saw this lab, and if you have any insights after doing the lab, share them here.