Robot Design

THE PLAN

We used coding logs in google slides to keep a history of changes to our code and attachments.  This helped when figuring out things like, robot starting positions and where the previous mini robot team left off. We also used a Kanban chart to track against big deadlines to make sure we were making enough progress as a team. 

Identify - Building and Coding

Our team took inspiration from our past robot designs, and what worked and didn’t work. We looked at our past 2 robot designs and saw 3 key things we wanted to fix; attachment motor locations, attachments with many functions that are easy to change, and cord management. 


Design - Robot & Code innovative features

Our base robot, S.C.A.R., now has motors in the front and back to complete missions from both directions. We have 4 motors: 2 for wheels and 2 for attachments. We also have 2 color sensors in the front on the right and left side and a Gyro sensor. This year we used the gyro sensor for more reliable turns and to correct drifting problems with the robot. 

One of the main attachments we use is the forklift basket, which is used for collecting energy cells, moving game pieces around the board, activating the Oil Rig and much more! We iterated this design over time from a single level forklift, to a multilevel forklift. But this design wasn't as effective to collect game pieces, so we added a second side support and a basket to the forklift. Now our robot is capable of scoring more points than ever before!

How the Code Makes the Robot act

We use an innovative DriveStraight MyBlock that adjusts our path back to angle 0 by varying B motor speed.  This reduces robot drift to the right as it travels across the mat. 

We use the Color Sensor to stop the robot as it turns to the black line. This makes sure we approach mission 3 at the same angle every time. This is an innovative way to use the color sensor, and something we’ve never tried before. After this we were able to reliably complete the run 100% of the time 

Iterate - Testing Robot & Code and improvements

This is a picture of Hannah and Eythan trouble shooting the code.   We spent a lot of time troubleshooting mission to mission interactions for our red, blue, and ToyStory Missions!

We spend more time in Jonathan's basement than our own basements!