Final Class Blog

The robotics semester has come to an end. In the robotics unit we covered the main areas of robot construction, NXT programming and the variety of sensor usage. Most of the robots that are used in real life have features that depend on what climate, terrain and other sources that a robot will encounter with. These are also found in the NXT robot which has sensors that avoid any obstacle or help your robot to complete a certain task, tires are critical in your robot because it determines the outcome of your experiment, the construction of your robot is also critical and the programming for your robot is also critical.

One of the most important components of a robot is the sensor which helps the robot to communicate with its surroundings and perform action based on feedback's. Sensor reading is when a sensor is reading the intensity and translating it into a reading. The first is the touch sensor its where you press a button so that a circuit is completed and electricity flows. In the NXT there is a sensor block that has three states pressed, released, and bumped these are critical to the robot because it allows you to determine how the robot will react. The second is the light sensor which detects surrounding light and measures its intensity. Values depend on the intensity of light that hits the sensor at the time you read its value. The next sensor is ultrasonic sensor which uses sound waves to detect obstacle. It uses high frequency sounds which bounces off objects and is read by the sensor the time each pulse takes to bounce back determines how far the object is. It uses value to allow the robot to steer away or back up.

The construction of your robot is also critical and the advantages of using TECHNIC construction is unique because instead of using beams for building plates to provide the shell it was built using studless beams. Margins of errors can be tested. Stacking technique which makes your robot heavier but strong. To add, technic beams allow us to build not just 90 degrees but diagonaly. Using traditional beams limits us to do the impossible using technic beams strives us to do the impossible. Gears have many roles and purposes. Gears is what makes your robot go faster, makes your robot have a lot of power and can also make your robot go slow depending on the gears. There are two words you need to know one is the driven gear which is the gear attached to the wheel, driving gear is the gear attached to the motors.

Throughout the semester we also learned about the NXT programming software which consisted of two main palettes. On the complete palletes is where blocks are programmed to make the robot perform actions such as moving, sensor blocks, and math/logic blocks which allowed the robot to compare data it had collected to make a decision. The NXT programming software would then be downloaded onto the NXT brick and the program could then be run.

Throughout the semester we have deepened and appilied our basic knowlegde from math and science and were constantly solving or calculating different algebraic formulas in order to measure and predict distance and speed and gear ratios. Working with different partners needed collaboration to achieve our tasks effectivetively, and collaboration and communication were important concepts throughout the course.

Construction of Minning Robot

The shape of the mining robot had physical difference with the task robot. For mining robot, the NXT is lying over the base and has 4 wheels supporting the robot. The robot uses 3 motors, 2 for wheels and 1 for ultrasonic sensor.

Since the motors are set in a forward mode in the robot you must set in your program for the motors to go in reverse so that it will move forward.

Chapter 21 "Staying Alive"

This chapter shows how to keep your robot working even if the sleep option on the brick has been set to a short period of time like 2 to 5 minutes. In the NXT brick has a feature that automatically turns off your robot after a certain amount of time its called the sleep timer. The sleep timer is a useful feature, and should set it to a reasonable time. help save battery power. The keep alive block works during the execution of your program if at any time the keep alive block is executed it will reset the sleep timer.

Challenge Day

Today I will put my robot to the test to see whether it works and to see whether my ingenious plan worked.

Day 3 Testing

Today we tested our robot and our program which went well but I had some problems such as the robot not going straight, the turns were bad and it was easy to solve but my biggest challenge was moving around the object and stopping at the black line thanks to Tyler who thought me on using the reset block I was able to move on and the second time I tried out with my robot it worked.

Day 2

Today I am finally finished with my robots design with all the sensors attached. Now lets talk about the programming so far I've just started and planning to finish it I will start with the first part which is the clap and move on to the light sensor reading and stop at the middle of the box for 5 seconds and then the touch sensor so far my robot has no issues but to be prepared I will test it out over and over again.

Obstacle Course Challenge

In this challenge I need to make my robot use all of its sensors such as sound, light, ultrasonic, and touch to complete the obstacle courses which contain 6 steps. First start with a clap(sound sensor), second stop 5 sec in the box, third bump into the pillar and turn right (touch sensor), fourth sense the wall and turn right (ultrasonic sensor), fifth avoid object(ultrasonic sensor), sixth stop after the line.

Chapter 11 and 12

These chapters are about loop blocks and switch blocks. Loop blocks is a block that can't really do much if it is alone accept when you are combining it with other commands. Now I will tell you how to use a loop block to use a loop block you first drag the loop block into the program and then drag the commands into the loop so that the program can repeat itself. Then if you look at the bottom of the loop box setting you can see that you have 5 choices such as loop forever, loop sensor which means when a sensor comes in contact, loop in amount of time, loop count, loop logic. Chapter 12 is about switch blocks they are blocks that command the robot to do one task only and that is if something happens or not but also can do two commands. By doing more than two commands you must unselected the flat view box and that allows you to do 2 commands.

Line Tracking

In the lab "Line tracking" we had to experiment the light sensor and also learn about its behaviors and programing system. Robots must be programmed to follow a black line on a white surface using the light sensor. First we put the Light sensor to the front of the robot but found out that it made to many errors, putting the light sensor at the back of the robot is better because if the sensor is closer to the wheels there are minimum chances of errors. We programed it by first placing a loop around the main program which makes your robot run at certain time or run the program longer. Set your loop and run it while it is less than 12 seconds. Then add the light sensor next to a loop around the move blocks so that it can make a decision on whether it is light it will turn left or if its dark it will turn right. Since the light sensor is set at the back of the robot it will work better because it is close to the wheels.

Chapter 4

In chapter 4 it is all about reading sensors such as light, ultrasonic, and touch. One of the most important components of a robot is the sensor which helps the robot to communicate with its surroundings and perform action based on feedback's. Sensor reading is when a sensor is reading the intensity and translating it into a reading. The first is the touch sensor its where you press a button so that a circuit is completed and electricity flows. In the NXT there is a sensor block that has three states pressed, released, and bumped these are critical to the robot because it allows you to determine how the robot will react. The second is the light sensor which detects surrounding light and measures its intensity. Values depend on the intensity of light that hits the sensor at the time you read its value. The next sensor is ultrasonic sensor which uses sound waves to detect obstacle. It uses high frequency sounds which bounces off objects and is read by the sensor the time each pulse takes to bounce back determines how far the object is. It uses value to allow the robot to steer away or back up. Using light sensor I first have to use the threshold which will divide the light value and dark value and it is essential. The process for getting your robot to follow a line is first set a cut of point in your threshold so that the robot can sense light and dark value then program in such a way that when the robot senses dark it turns right and when the robot senses light it turns left.

Chapter 2 Gears

Gears have many roles and purposes. Gears is what makes your robot go faster, makes your robot have a lot of power and can also make your robot go slow depending on the gears. There are two words you need to know one is the driven gear which is the gear attached to the wheel, driving gear is the gear attached to the motors. Finding the gear ratio you must first divide the number of teeth on the driven gear by the number of teeth on the driving gear. If it turns out that the gear ratio is below 1 that means your robot will move fast with less power. If somehow you want to increase the speed and power you can create the gear train which multiplies the ratio for gear 1 and the ratio for the second gear. Bevel gears are helpful in changing the direction of the force this is excellent if you don't have room for the wheel. Pulleys can be used to lift an object and have the same characteristic as gears.

"Circuit Race"

The "Circuit Race" was a great experienced because its where we tested our knowledge on past activities. The task was not easy and made you think outside of the box. We had to learn some pieces of information that would help before starting the program. In this activity turns and tires were critical, so we had to do some modification to our current task bot in order to make good and sharp turns and move forward. We thought that life would be easy, but instead it got worst we had trouble with the wheels which tends to stray of course also had trouble with the turn. Overall it was a very competitive experienced.

These images show the program I used for "Circuit Race" and the images on our modified task bot be careful we used smallest wheel and this picture of the robot was before the challenge.

“Movin' and Making Turns”

In the past week in robotics class we have finished two labs measured turns, and right face. In the lab right face we learn t the differences between swing turn and a point turn. A swing turn is when one wheel is in motion or spinning while the other wheel is not, but a point turn is when one wheel moves forward and the other reverse or moves backward creating a efficient and faster turn. In the lab measured turns we learned how to get the robot to turn a certain amount of degrees by setting a ratio of the circumference of the circle and the circumference of the wheel. for homework I read chapter 4 which is all about the move block. Move block can control more than one motor at a time. This makes the turns when a robot moving forward easier. Move block as a disadvantage it cant do a very good swing turn. But it is easy to put one block than two move blocks. I hope to accomplish the Circuit race.

Hello World My Name is

Chapter 3 of "LEGO Mindstorms NXT-G Programming Guide" book is basically about using the display block in the programing software. Using the display block you will see many configuration panel for different function purposes for example what you want to appear on the LCD and for how much time you want it there. There is also drawing tool that I can make pictures out of. And also allows me to add text. In order to make my life easier I can use data hub. Create a program that pops up in the screen that says "hello my name is"by using display blocks on the NXT. We also programmed the robot to make a sound after 2 rotation then making another sound when reversing 2 rotation. End, of lab I created a program after a clap it showed a angry face and said game over. I also tested it out on three people and saw whether they could guess what is the mood of the robot and all three got it all right. Using the display block you can program faces, words or pictures this can help in the outside world by showing emotion and communication. In the future I would add sound to my robot to see which program is running and use display block to attract viewers.

What is a Robot? What is a Program?

How is a robot different from a toaster? Well a robot is a device that is built for performing actions and interact with its surroundings something a toaster cant do a robot can also examine its surroundings and respond to objects such as tables, doors ...etc. What is a Program? A program is a set of instruction given to my robot. Program structures are extremely important because if the robots are not given specific or strict instructions they wont perform and wont know what to do. To write the program we need to

1. write Pseudo code - (fake program)
   
2. transfer it to the NXT
   

Full Speed Ahead

Last class we finally used our taskbots for programming. A robot can only do the action if it has allgorithm which is a recipe or procedure to command the robot what to do, to do this we need a programming system. The NXT programming is what we are going to use to do simple commands. At our first lesson of programming we were given a task to program a simple run. We also learn that there are 3 basic icon which is move, wait and stop. Each of this icon can be configured to time, lenght, port. So we place two move icons which is to start the motor for port c and then port b and then we placed wait icon so that we could give specific amount of distance and rotation. Later we used the stop icon which stops the motor for port c and b.

“Chapter 1: Understanding LEGO Geometry”

The advantages of using TECHNIC construction is it allows or offers options for connectivity and even allows for building at odd angles that is difficult to complete with a traditional beams. Technic beams or bricks has holes that allow axles to pass through and allow the beams to be connected to each other making the impossible, possible. 8448 Super Street Sensation which was built fully from studless parts. This creation was unique because instead of using beams for building plates to provide the shell it was built using studless beams. Margins of errors can be tested. Stacking technique which makes your robot heavier but strong. To add, technic beams allow us to build not just 90 degrees but diagonaly. Using traditional beams limits us to do the impossible using technic beams strives us to do the impossible.

What Defines a Robot?

What defines a robot? well, what defines a robot, it is an algorithm which is the "recipe" or procedure to the robots to perform a certain procedure with specific variable or "ingredients". Based on this it also has the ability to perform like a human but also doing missions and is commanded by the human who operates it with S.P.A which stands for sense, plan, act. S.P.A allows the robot to act like a human but not completely it allows the robot to take in info from its area. Using this info it will plan to complete this mission and then act it out. the robot abilities also allows it to work in different terrains and atmosphere . On Thursday we used sound sensors which senses high frequency sounds and commands the robot to move to the specific area from where the sound it is transmitted. The robot will move faster if there is a higher frequency of sound.