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.