Robot Challenge 4 + Laser Cutting Project
For the Laser Cutting Project we are required to find a problem in our robots design or some part of your robot that can be improved. Once you have found that you can then design something on Autocad to fix this issue. You then send this design to the teacher to get prints and complete a write up about your design, why you think it will help and if it works how you’d hoped.
This Challenge begins very similar to challenge 3, so similar that we can use the same code, but there are some key differences. For this challenge, we need a robot that can drive autonomously through a maze, using its distance sensor to know when to turn left, right, or stop.
Next, we need to build the maze we previously drew in Autocad out of cardboard. This maze needs to have at least three turns and no more than five. The walls must be at least 6 inches tall. The walls can be sensed by the sensors, configured in 2 minutes or less, and 10 inches wide at its narrowest part.
Lastly, in class, we have to have our robot complete three mazes: your own maze, one of your choosing, and the professor's s choice. After completing them, you must grade your performance from 1-5.
Day 11/25
Beginning of the Maze
Today's goal is a large one. We are hoping to complete our maze fully or cut and build all materials necessary for the maze. This is because I am leaving for vacation in the morning, and Dashiell is leaving tomorrow night. We also hope to get our laser cuts so we can add them to the robot.
We need to make the walls for the maze, figure out a way to connect them, even if it’s just tape, and figure out a way to make the maze stand up on its own.
Our braces that we are using to hold up the walls
A look at our cubby after cutting out all the pieces
Today, we were able to finish most of what we had planned to do. The only challenge we faced was that we were told the laser cuts were not finished for our class while we were working on our project. This meant that we couldn’t attach our laser cut and test how it accomplished its task, but other than that, we were able to cut out all of the walls with ease and build all of the supports even though they took about 2 hours to cut and glue together.
Day 11/26
The Laser Cut Project
Very early rough draft of battery pack ideas
This gave me an idea of what I should make my Laser Cut for a battery pack holder for the new battery pack. I got to work fast by measuring where I planned to put the robot. I used those measurements to space the holder's feet apart and figure out how wide and tall I needed to make my AutoCAD drawing.
Above is my laser cut straight out of the laser cutter. I wasn’t able to get these myself since I was out of town at the time, but they came out exactly how I wanted.
During Robot Challenge 3, we had to add a larger battery pack to our robot. This created the problem of where we would put the battery pack now because it doesn’t fit in the back. We decided to make do with what we had and used a cup to place it over the robot, but this created problems. The main two are that it blocks us from hitting the reset button, and it is very flimsy, so it tends to lean to one side and cause the robot to turn.
AutoCad drawing of battery holder
Above is the laser-cut battery pack in action. We used this for Robot Challenge 4, and it worked like a charm. It made it very easy for us to reach the reset button on the Arduino board and helped distribute the weight over the robot.
Day 12/2
Building the maze and finishing Robot
Today, we wanted to get everything done. Considering that tomorrow would be the last day of the project, we didn’t have much time. So our goals today were very grand, we were hoping to get the maze completely built and put together, and on top of that edit our code so our robot would run through perfectly since then we could have one of the runs tomorrow finished early.
Finalized robot with laser-cut
Our half complete maze at the time
First, Dashiell worked on the code that we were going to use tomorrow while I hot-glued the braces onto the walls; after we both finished our jobs, we were able to put the maze together. Unfortunately, even with the new code, we couldn’t get our robot to run through the maze correctly, so we are hoping that the problem will correct itself overnight.
We also successfully attached the laser-cut, which seemed to fix most of our weight distribution problems.
Day 12/3
The Final Robot
Today is the final testing day, so our plan is to quickly set up the maze before class starts. Next, we should record ourselves completing our maze and then move on to picking a maze that may be easier for our robot to navigate. Lastly, we should complete the maze we are assigned to because I have a feeling this will be the most difficult maze, and its better to get a good grade on the first two then stress about the last one.
Finalized robot with laser-cut on test day
Team Golfs Maze (Assigned)
Team Igloos Maze (Choice)
Our final maze design set up
Today, we quickly got to work by grabbing our maze pieces and setting them up before class even started. We then got straight to working on getting through our maze. Once we finally got some reasonable attempts and recorded them, we moved on to complete a maze that seemed easy to us. After getting through that maze with minimal collisions, we had to finish the last maze, which, as I guessed, was the most difficult. This was because the legs of this maze were extremely long, which isn’t a good match for a robot that doesn’t go perfectly straight, so we were only able to get through with me directing the robot once.
Below are Team Ping Pong’s best attempts at Challenge 4
Team Ping Pongs Maze (Ours)
Team Ping Pongs Maze (Ours)
Challenge 4 Code Explained
When coding our robot for challenge 4, we had a relatively simple approach: the robot would move forward until it hit a wall (or a distance lower than six on the distance sensor), and then it would turn to the right 90 degrees if it didn’t see a wall in front of it, the robot would then move forward, if it did encounter a wall it would turn 180 degrees to the left, (or 90 degrees left from the original position). If after the left turn, there’s no wall then it resets from the top and moves forward again, however, if it turns left and sees a wall it will assume it's at the end of the maze and it will stop. After testing, we tweaked and adjusted the turns to ensure they were truly 90 and 180-degree turns. The flow chart below illustrates this:
Unfortunately, our issue for the past three challenges has been the same, and we still cannot solve it. It seems that no matter what we do, the robot will always curve to the right or left. We have tried everything from switching wheels to cleaning the floor, powering up one of the wheels, and even adding weight to one side, yet nothing has changed. In Challenge 4, we were unable to complete the final maze fully due to this issue.
Challenges
and
Peer Reflection
During challenge 1, we received some peer feedback. This feedback was mostly about our lack of entries and our entries being in the wrong order (oldest to newest). After receiving this feedback, we changed how our notebook was set up and began to record more detailed entries.
Next, we usually split our work, with Logan handling all the robot's hardware while Dashiell has the code and adjusts it accordingly. We consider this 50/50 since we both work on the design notebook.
We used this strategy for Challenges 3 and 4, meaning Logan handled everything wrong with the robot and most of the maze's construction while Dashiell created the code for them.
