What We Learned

We learned that programming a robot to do a specific task is not as easy as it would seem. We were able to design our robot very quickly and we never ventured far from our original design. The hardest part, however, came from the actual coding of the robot’s “thought process”. It was rather simple in determining how one was to solve the maze, but taking that knowledge and converting it into code was much more difficult. We came up with an original algorithm, but soon realized that it was not working as intended, so we needed to rethink our though process and create a new algorithm.

The next difficult part was getting the movement to be what we wanted. Not only did we need to devise a correction algorithm to line itself straight with the board, but we needed to measure the amount of time needed to turn and the amount of time needed to move into another square. We also needed to account for the different strengths of the motors so that it could move straight and turn accurately.

Aside from dealing with the physical problems that faced us, we also realized the importance of teamwork. This was a huge project to put together in a month when you take into account all of our busy schedules and the vast amount of work that the project needed. We worked on the project weekly and each member of the group was able to provide input in order to successfully bring Crabbot into being.