A PFields Robotics Project

Due: In class demo during class Nov 15th with papers due the week in class.


Overview and Objective:

You're group will program a robot which will traverse a maze to find a light using potential fields for motion planning.


The Possible Projects:

You will use the GoPiGo robot to find a light in a maze such as the one below. You are to create a robot that can find a light in an arbitrary maze with obstacles (made of the same maze materials) in it. Your robot will be dropped somewhere in the maze (chosen by the instructor on demo day) and will have to find the light. When the robot finds the light, it should stop no more than 12-13 cm (about 5 inches) from the light and play a tune for about 4 seconds. You can use the grove buzzer to do this. If you are using all of your sensor/motor ports, you could alternately flash the LEDs in a longish and easily identifiable pattern Once you start the robot in its corner, you cannot touch it again until it either runs out of time or claims to have found the light and stopped. Your robot has five minutes to perform this task. You will be penalized for your robot (or any student) moving any part of the environment. (the walls of the maze cannot be easily moved, but the light is is more movable, and more dangerous for the robot)

In the past students have found incandescent lights work much better than other types. They are fragile though. We'll try incandescent lights and/or LEDs to see which work better.


a view of the maze - clutter is no longer used.

a view of the maze - clutter is no longer used 



A few useful notes



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 guidelines on what I'd like to see in it. Make sure you use section headings to make each section easy to find.