The Robotics Experience

Building custom robots is what i thought was the funniest part of the robotics class as you took the knowledge from the book and made something fun out of it. Assembling robots for the obstacle course was the funniest event of the semester as we did a wicked robot with all the sensors on top of each other in a tower.

Programming the NXT was not as fun as i thought it would be as it was a visual programming language, this made the programming much easier than writing programs. By using the visual programming language i think everyone knew what to do and it wasn't that hard. This set the level of the course to be more of a basic course to introduce robots.

Experimenting with the sensors was another very funny part of the robotics course as experimenting with it learned us the aspects of the sensors and how we could use them in the big competitions, such as the obstacle course. We got our own favourite sensor and then tried to use it to the max, for example Chris and Jack made a robot that could avoid several cans placed at random places.

We appleid our basic knowledge from math and science, even here it was very basic so anyone that have taken the IM 1 course on ISKL should be able to figure out the math in this course. This again is one of the cons of this class, it is very basic and can somethimes be boring for the people taking more advanced courses.

Reason, Communicate and Collaborate, are parts of the School wide learning results (SLRs) and I think this course uses all of these SLRs as we need to reason, communicate and collaborate to make the robot in the best way.

Tractor Pull

Combined with the Drag race we will also build a robot that will move the heaviest object over 50 cm, this will be called the "Tractor Pull" activity. On this we plan to basically reverse the ratio described in my previous post so that we get a high torque but a low speed(as torque is more important). Yet again, may the best bot win!

Drag Race

In the Drag race we are supposed to modify or rebuild our robot so that it goes as fast as possible. Our plan is to modify the taskbot and make the gear ratio as big as possible so that the robot has a low torque but high speed. The problem with this is that the taskbot might not move as the torque is so low. We are then supposed to line up our robots and battle up to 3 other teams from the class. We will then be graded on how good our robot preformes. May the best bot win!

Gears (Chapter 2)

Chapter 2 talks about gears(hence the title). It talks about gear ratio which is how many rotations one gear does compared to the other gear. There are different kinds of gears, normal ones, bevel gears, etc. The bevel gear can change the direction of the movement 90 degrees. There is also something called the pulley system, where you use a band that moves two gears, this is useful when the gears a far apart from each other. By reading this chapter you find that lego gears are really similar to real life gears, there are a few differences though, real gears are not made out of plastic.

Classic Projects (Chapter 14)

Chapter 14 basically talks about how to follow a line, which we basically already did. It talks about how to do it in the best way, our robot basically turned from left to right to move forward and with that the speed was not constant. They have a motor that they can steer the front wheel with, this makes the robot drivable and faster. it also talks about another kind of robot with a big bumper attached to two touch sensors, and a light sensor pointed to the ground. That robot can feel the ground the with the light sensor and the bumper(touch sensor). This would be useful if you wanted to explore a room that might not have ground everywhere.

Obstacle Course Results/Conclusion

Success! It was very fun doing this challenge as we did everything properly and got a full score. We didn't use the shooter though, which i would hoping that we would use. We changed the wheels in the last minute to treads because we thought it would go straighter. It did go straighter but not totally straight as we only used two wheels inside the treads.

Progamming for the Obstacle course

today we did some work on the robot, my partner amirul worked on the programming and needs to get the right measurements of turning, thresholds etc. I did some work with attaching the sensors.

Building the Course Robot

We are now supposed to build our robot so that all sensors can be on it. We looked in the book and it said that we are supposed to build it symmetrical to make the robot more stable and easy to pick a part if we need to. We started with totally rebuilding the bot, this didnt work out too well and we had to re build the taskbot again. One day wasted. We wanted to use the shooter so we planned to have it in front. The problem that then appeared was that the touch and ultrasonic sensors and the shooter had to be in front. Our solution to the problem was to build a tower with all those things on it. The sound sensor was the easiest to apply as it could be put basically anywhere, we put it on top for simplicity. The light sensor was also easy to apply and there was no discussion that the light sensor should be at the back. Combined with our last-minute-applied treads the robot probably won the ugliness contest.

Understanding Lego Geometry (Chapter 1)

Chapter one goes through the basics of Lego robotics. The basics include measurements of pieces, e.g. to the right there is a lego piece, it would be described as being 2 x 4 x 1. That lego piece is a traditional lego piece and appeared first in 1949. The chapter also talks about evolution of lego and how to apply mathematics to Lego with the pythagoras theorem. (A squared + b squared = c squared it is useful when you are trying to find which LEGO bit fits in the diagonal on a square chassis.) An example of how the pythagorean theorem is if a frame has the sides 12 and 20 then we can put the number in to the theorm equation and find out that the diagonal beam would be It also talks about the ratios between. The ratio is 6:5 and it is used to make the block fit.

Challenge: Obstacle Course

We got a new assignment on wednesday, we are supposed to create a robot that can manuver through an obsticle course. The first thing it is suposed to do is to start with a clap and go forward stop in a box marked with tape and wait there for 5 seconds. Then it is supposed to proceed forward, touch a wall in front of it and then turn to the right. it is then supposed to go forward until it senses another wall and then turn to the right. It will the proceed forward where there will be cans placed in random places in the way. it will then either manuver around it or shoot it down. the thing is that it cant exit the track if you are going to manuver around it

Field of View Experiment (Investigation Summary)

On Monday November the 3rd we did an experiment involving the ultra sonic sensor, me and Bart got grouped together with Kenny and Navid. The objective was to see the range of which the ultrasonic sensor detects an object; in this case it was a coke light can. We started with setting up the robot at the bottom of a lying whiteboard. Then we took a one meter long ruler and beside it we put tape to about 110 cm(image to the right). On the tape we drew lines every 10 cm. Then we put the coke can at different places and where the sensor indicated a reading we put black tape and wrote the location. End result at the bottom.