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Wall-E Log
2/9/17:
Today was our first meeting with the team: Bela, Matteo, and Sierra were able to be there, but, unfortunately, Catherine was unable to attend. We did a little of bit of basic lego Mindstorm code learning.
2/10/17:
Today was our first out of school meeting were Matteo and Sierra put some finishing touching on the robot structure and make a list of parts needed to work on the coding. We also worked to perfect how we wanted the ramp. Then we started working on the code for competition.
Collin and Mateo work to perfect the Mateo created a basic robot for us to Here is the start of a perfect ramp created by Sierra.
robot structure. start with. Here is the robot at the beginning of the night.
We started to work on what sensors we wanted and the reason behind each sensor.
Parts needed:
We need this for the ramp.
Quantity: 10
Color: Preferably red or black.
We need one more so that we can have one in the front and in the back to make sure the robot does not fall off the ring.
Color sensor
Thursday Morning:
2/16/17:
We worked on the ramp this morning and trying to perfect the ramp. We built it this morning. We are going to put a touch sensor on the ramp so that the robot touches the ramp than it will flip the robot.
2/23/17:
Today we worked more on the ramp and perfecting placing the touch sensor in the middle of the ramp. We also worked on placing wires and cords for the sensors.
3/2/17: Today we rebuilt the ramp because after finishing the ramp, we found out that it did not fit the length requirements. We then decide to seriously alter the ramp so that it would no longer move up and down and it would be shorter in order for it to fit the length requirements. We changed it so now it does not move and it is the perfect length. We decided to flip the pieces that we had so that the long side of the sloped pieces that we had previously used on the ramp now had the short side as the bottom of the ramp. All we need to attach now is the "head" and then we will be done.
3/5/17 - Sunday morning work days
Today Matteo and Sierra worked on placing the head. Then we worked on testing the sensor that would detect other robots. We then realized that we had an extra motor not being used and an extra sensor spot. Then after serious consideration, we decided that the sensor needed to spin in order to sense robots from all around. We had some creative differences about where to put the vision thing, so we decided to add a second sensor to have all of the sensors taken up. Matteo also argued that second sensor would allow for us to scan the surrounding while at the same time having a sensor to sense exactly what was in front of us.
3/9/17 - Thursday Morning
Today we switched out the brick, so it uses the educational technology instead of the home edition. We also began programming and we made the Bot go in a rectangle.
3/28/17 - Tuesday Morning
Today Matteo and Sierra started programming the robot. We learned about how to find out the specifics of how far the robot can travel. We also learned that when we have an if then statement it always needs to be inside a loop. We also decided to take off the inferred sensor because when we had it on it was not only unstable when attached, but also it was impractical for sensing the other robot. In addition, it would have made the program much more complicated than it needed to be so we decided to take it off. We were very productive measuring the distance (4.25 inches) for one rotation. Here is a picture of what we did with the code today.
Notes:
5-second delay
The robot goes outside of the box
All switch inside a loop (if statement in forever loop)
Reflective light intensity for color sensor
Sierra and Catherine - Color sensor research and programming
Bring USB from home -
Questions for Mr. Taylor:
- How do we make our space sensor only sense other robots?
Have robot turn around to sense the other robot
- how do we rotate the images on our google site?
3/28/17 - Tuesday in Class through Friday in Class
Catherine and Sierra worked on the code for the robot and perfecting how the robot would move. We ran the code over and over again. For some reason, the robot continuously spun in a circle. Then Mr. Taylor enlightened us about the fact that the robot cannot see curved things. So we worked really hard to perfect the double code.
3/30/17 - Thursday Morning
Today we worked on the code and trying to make sure that everything works.
4/2/17 - Sunday Morning
We worked on the code until we thought we were done. We also planned for our trip in the following week. We were really proud of all of our work, so we ate pizza.
4/4/17 - Tuesday Morning
Today we built the final ramp by changing it to white, and we added some longer pieces. Then we all looked at the code, patted ourselves on the back, and said, "good job."
4/6/17 - Thursday Morning
Today we completely decided to change the robot from treads to wheels, because the wheels were so much faster than the treads. Catherine and Sierra attempted to change the treads to wheels and were unsuccessful, so Mateo switched the robot's design.
4/7/17 - Friday After School
Today we went to maker space to work on the robot. We were unable to completely fix the robot. For two hours we tried to fix the robot. We built a makeshift ring and worked on stopping wall-E from falling off of our "ring".
4/8/17 - Competition Day
Our problems started really early when all three girls slept through the alarm so we did not leave home until 6:40, but it was okay because Sierra's mom drove really fast. Then we stopped for coffee and donuts before going to competition.
We finally got to the competition center and my mom dropped us off at the competition center and went to park. After that, we signed in with our robot and got the robot measured and weighed. Next, we decided to fix the code before the robot had to test if it could wait 5 seconds and roll out of the box. We had a random one-second wait in our code, and once we took that out of our code, the robot worked perfectly.
Then the competition started. Wall-E started off well, in our first match Wall-E was pushed off the ring, but in the second match Wall-E pushed off the other robot. This made us have to go into a tie breaker round. Unfortunately, Wall-E failed us and tied with the other team in the tiebreaker. We then had to go to the front for a coin toss. We let the other team choose heads or tails so that we would have better karma; they chose tails. Fate was on our side, and we won the coin toss. That was Wall-E's first and only win in the round robin rounds.
When round two came along, we played a huge and very smart team of people. Sadly, they crushed us by successfully pushing us off the ring in a very small amount of time. We learned from this match that we need to have side protection because when the T-boned us, it was very successful for them. In between the second and third round, we had some time to reconsider our lives. We decided to change the code to use the ultrasonic sensor to sense other objects. Doctor Brauner gave us his daughter's code to use because theirs was working really well, according to him. We tried it and it did seem to work, kind of, but we thought it was dishonest to use another persons code and the code we had written during the break worked better, or so we thought. The third round really hurt Wall-E; for one, we used the changed code and Wall-E ran off the edge. Bye Wall-E. At the same time, the other team had been working on their robot since they were eleven, so it was perfected. We learned a lot from that match. We learned about the amount of traction needed and the fact that Wall-E needs bigger wheels which would help with traction. After that round, we decide to return to the previous code because it was more consistent. For the last round, we played a good team, and we still lost. Finally, it was time for single round elimination. It started off eh, we were not happy to find out that we were playing the one adult in our league. We thought this was the end of Wall-E's professional career; that was sad. But then the unimaginable happened, Wall-E won! Everyone cheered! We were ecstatic; we never thought we would get this far. Then we played the next round against the same person from round 3. They once again crushed us, but at least Wall-E stayed on the ring this time.
That was the end of our competition day, so we hopped in the car and drove home. One the way home we stopped for ice cream and watched Passengers. It was really yummy. Then we dropped off Catherine and went home.
Thank you!
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