Building the Course Robot

For the progamming of the robot all of the blocks are pretty much in place. we have already put we have put in all of the blocks in and done the calculations. we had a huge problem with the light sensor though because even though the program is in place the light sensor would not go on. no matter what we did, checked the wires check the NXT check the programming change the light sensor nothing worked. so we came to the conclusion that it was the NXT that was at fault so we changed the NXT. but the NXT that we used was out of battery and since we already put it on we had to take it appart and put in another NXT which work. so we used that one because the light sensor came on. at first we thought we were going to make our own original robot but since it was to complicated we remade the task bot with a few touches of our own. we added an extra motor on top of a flat NXT. we builed a structure at the tip of the task bot to put our sound sensor our touch sensor and our shooter. we put a bar in the middle of the shooter connected to the third motor so that when the ultrasonic sensed the cans at 10cm it would make the motor turn up and trigger the shooter. we also connected two bars from the structure up front to the NXT for extra support. at first we used the standard task bot wheels. but then we changed to the thin carriage like wheels but we found that they were not going straight so we decided to use treads instead. and they worked perfectly. they were exactly straight. since there is no actual wheel size we experimented by trial and error to find the turning degrees. with that we were finished with the programming and were ready for actually doint the obstacle course official run.

Obstacle Course Challenge

This obstacle course is gonna be a tough challenge because this is the first time that we have synchronized all of the sensors and the challenge mostly is writing the program that works. There are so many blocks that need to be used in this challenge that i've only covered a few. but i have also thought about ways that could make this challenge more interesting. one such idea is when the robot is in the square there might be a way to put in some funny sounds and also when the robot hits the wall maybe and OUCH!!! I think this challenge will definately be a fun, crazy and confusing challenge.

chapter 1 summary

Well this chapter is basically talking about proportions of the blocks and how to measure certain blocks. The cubes are looked at studs up and that is the orientation. There are basically three dimensions to the cubes the height being the from bottom to top, the width the shorter of the two proportions and the length being the longer of the two proportions. the ration for the height and the vertical measurement is 6:5 and if 4 cubes are put together the area would be 600. this chapter also talks about the Pythagorean theorem. this theorem states that the base A squared added by the height B squared equals the hypotenuse C squared. so say you have a=3 b=4 and c=4 this will not work because 3 squared plus 4 squared equals 25 and 4 squared equals 16. This chapter also talks about stud less beams which were invented by LEGO to reach and older audience. It also talks about how to use the stud less blocks to make a structure strong and light and the way to do that is to make a chassis which is basically a small beam that holds the corners together.

Finding the field of view

What we were trying to do with this experiment was find out what were the limits of which the sound sensor can sense. So we started out by first finding the furthest distance(in a straight line) that the sensor can sense. we used a white board eraser to accomplish this. then we marked that line with tape and measured the distance. ours was around110cm. the every 10cm we marked a line on the tape and then we put the whiteboard eraser at the 10cm mark and marked how far out the sensor can sense the eraser. we did this every 10cm left and right. what we found was quite interesting. it seems that when it is closest(so around 10 to 30 cm) the sensor cannot sense that wide, maybe about 2 to 5 cm. but when the eraser is at the middle distance(around 40 to 70) the sensor starts to be able to sense wider. although it isnt always perfect there is that pattern. and then when we put the eraser at its furthest the sensor again goes back to picking up hardly anything. so from this experiment my teammates and i have concluded that the ultrasonic sensor works the best in the ranges of 40 to 70 cm.