Atlas+Stones

Initial Design: We wanted to create a robot that would perform the following fuctions -move (straight, stop, turns) -pick up and drop off the mass -sense light/darkness

Day 1 Leah and Jovan both worked on building the robot. We knew we would need light sensors, gears to provide a force advantage (attached to a pulley with string), and two wheels for general movement.

Day 2 Jovan built the robot while Leah had to restart the program because the program she wrote on Day 1 was erased. We organized the program using MyBlocks because otherwise it would freeze. Here is a picture of the general idea of our program organized into myblocks:

Day 3 Jovan continued building while Leah finished the program. We rebuilt our entire robot, seeing that the general design ended up being unstable and angled. Even with the help of a counterweight to balance its forward torque, we had no luck maintaining stability. We knew our focus for our next design would be building the majority of the robot directly above the center of mass (in between the wheels and where the brick lay.)

Day 4 <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We changed the robot in order to make the lever arm (with the motor/gears/string attached) farther away from the center of mass so that it would clear the distance between the double black and drop off bin. We changed the program to accommodate this change, by erasing the "go" for 1 second block that we needed before. This change forced us to use a counterweight, though.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Day 5 <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">We finished the robot design and began testing the program. We tested out our program for the first time and ran into much difficulty. The robot’s light sensors were not sensing the black lines. We worked on the program for the majority of the period, adjusting sensitivity. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Here is a picture of the base of our robot: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Day 6-7 <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">We adjusted our program and made necessary changes such as having the robot move forward a tiny bit (one second, half power) just so it could clear the box on the delivery. We stabilized our design because we were encountering problems in the winding up of the string. The string would frequently get caught and tangled. The stabilization of the motor system allowed us to hold that part straight and have success while winding the string. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Here is a picture:

Day 8: We came in early today and finished up the programming to make everything trial-ready. We did the trial in class and had success with a few touches necessary to keep the robot tracking the line.