Monday, March 22, 2010

Project 1 - The Beginning of the Program and the Build

To achieve our objectives we needed to start thinking about how the robot would best be created to handle the tasks in front of it. Both the light and ground drawings were literally just created by the tracking of the robot and largely unaffected by how the robot moved, the desire to produce a 3D drawing however would require a lot more thinking and testing to get it up and running.

Our options for input sensors were light, sound, ultrasonic and touch; because we wanted the robot to maneuver around obstacles and not to get stuck on them we selected touch sensors and an ultrasonic sensor to guide the robot as best as we could through whatever we chose to throw at it. These two types of sensor are also quite compatable because the ultrasonic sensor can only sense an object if it is at 90 degrees to it, if the waves from this hit at an angle they will not reflect back into the sensor and thus it cannot 'see' the object in its path; this is where the touch sensors come in we have tried mounting one to each side of the front with a bow shaped structure connecting the two so if it hits at any angle either one sensor or the other will be pushed.



When making the program we want the robot to move until it encounters an object, either up ahead or by coming into physical contact with it, and then to maneuver away from it in a varying direction and at a varying angle (to keep things irregular and not form a specific pattern that would look too similar with each trial).

Our build will need to move and turn efficiently, to be able to protect itself from factors in its environment in order to keep creating its art, to sense and respond to obstacles and to distribute its wool and lines as it moves.

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