Due: Wed Oct10th
Overview: This is the traditional line following lab with a couple of twists. You will design and program a robot to search through a maze (essentially a line following lab). Use any method you like to program the robot.
This is your first project and your objective is to integrate sensor input and motor output to perform a simple line following task. You will have the opportunity to get used to some of the quirks of the robots and the fairly inexpensive commodity parts by using them in a straightforward introductory task. Your robot will need to continuously monitor sensors and act accordingly in real time with no external input from you.
Your materials are in the blue multiplo bins that you've been working with.
In addition to the multiplo set, you have two phigits IR reflectance
sensors that you can use which I added to your kits at the end of last
class.
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For those of you who have card access setup (it should be all of you by now), you have access of the lab whenever Conant is open and the other class isn't meeting.
Your group will build a multiplo/arduino based robot that
will navigate a maze. Your maze will consist of a colored line on a
contrasting background. Two sample mazes will be provided in the lab to
practice on. One will be a silver line on a black background while the
other is a black line on a white background. You should design your robot
to navigate the maze as quickly as possible without skipping any of the
maze or getting lost and running off of the maze.
On Oct 10th each of the groups will demo their robot in
class on a new maze that I will bring in at that time. Dead reckoning will
not be an acceptable method of solving this task. You will need to use
the sensors to navigate the maze.
Your robot must run unteathered, and the IR remote receiver sensor cannot be used for this project.
For this lab we will be using the arduino C-like environment.
You are not guaranteed a particular color for the line or the background in the final demo, you are only guaranteed that there will be a contrast as significant as that in the test maze. You should write your program so that you are calibrating the sensors before beginning the maze. Your group will be given a couple minutes to calibrate your robot's sensors before beginning the demo if you want to physically show your robot the colors.
Batteries each group will get 6 AA batteries for this project. If we find that this drains the batteries too soon, we;ll switch to rechargables.
Most of you have not used this particular style of building hardware so here are some official multiplo guides giving sample robot builds. Feel free to tweak any of them to be more of what you need than you see in the guide.
http://multiplo.org/files/docs/guides/BuildingKit.ThreeWheeled.Assembly.en.20121226.pdf
http://multiplo.org/files/docs/guides/StarterKit.Octo.Assembly.en.20121123.pdf
http://multiplo.org/files/docs/guides/BuildingKit.Gripper.Assembly.en.20120927.pdf
Remember that this lab is shared with other classes, so when you leave the lab for the day, you must return all of your materials to the shelves. Make sure that the sample maze is back near the wall (but still visible to other groups who might come in later.) Make sure that your robot and parts kit is in your space. You are responsible if your group leaves your robot out on the table and it gets broken.
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.
Introduction
this is where you explain the problem you wer trying to solve and why it is relevant
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 relevance to both the current task at hand and the general problem of robots acting in the world.
Include a diagram of your behaviors and their interactions, including all primitive and non-primitive pfield behaviors. Give me the tables with your sensor inputs and vector outputs and describe your reasoning and calibration process.
Evaluate your robot
Evaluate your robots suitability for the task and the environment include your robot's actual performance in the demo. How well would your robot perform in other environments? Evaluate pfields as a navigation mechanism compared to the more hard coded approach you used for the box lab.
Concluding 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.
Have fun and I look forward to seeing your finished projects in class next Month.