A fully autonomous, wall pushing robot
Our task was to develop, implement, and test an autonomous robot, aka "Dueling Edit Vehicle" (DEV) that will participate in a game comprised of pushing "COMMITs" (movable barriers) between the Local & Remote REPOs (two sides of the arena). The goal is to push those barriers to the side of the opponent. The winner is whoever has pushed more of the commits to the other side after 2:18min.
The goal of the game is to have as many COMMITs on the opponent's side of the field as possible. The field has four IR beacons outputting different IR pulses along with black tape along the branches to help with navigation and team detection.
Our DEV: the Tera Turbine, was designed to maneuver the field below in an autonomous fashion.
G1: Playing field / arena
G2: Playing field / arena schematic
Using an array of distance sensors, reflectance sensors, and IR sensors, the Tera Turbine can:
Using IR Sensors to detect beacon frequencies, an LED light is then lit to correspond with the team color
Using Distance Sensors we are able to decide which COMMIT is closest to us
Using Reflectance Sensors we are able to track the black tape to drive in a straight line
Our strategy to win the game is to have a strong bot with full automation in order to maximally use the time. The distance sensors at left and right decide whether the bot should enter the branch or not. The bot only enters the branch when the branch is close to the bot.
Click below to explore our page further to get the details on the hardware and software involved in creating our Dueling Edit Vehicle!