Our OTV had three navigation objectives. First, to get within 150mm of the mission site. Second, To navigate through the obstacles. Finally, to either go under the limbo bar or over the bump.

Our OTV had three mission objectives. First, identify the topography of the mission site. Second, measure the number of candles lit. Finally, the put out all flames lit, besides the center flame.

The mission arms purpose way 2 fold. The first purpose was to determine the number of candles lit. The second was to put out those candles with fans. The tinfoil on top of the fans was added to direct the wind produced by the fans directly onto the candle.

Obstacle detection was accomplished by our ultrasonic sensor. This sensor could identify the traversable and non-traversable obstacles. We had it set to detect an obstacle if it was within 35cm of the ultrasonic sensor. That distance was dependent upon the length of our OTV arms. However, our ultrasonic sensor was angled slightly downwards which caused problems with our OTV detecting an obstacle if course mats were even a little higher than perfectly flat.

Mission site detection was composed of two tasks. To determine the topography of the candle box, and determine the number of candles lit. We determine the topography by using limit switches with purple straws attached to the ends to widen them. Since there were three possible topographies that had different front heights, we could use just 2 limit switches to determine the right topography. We were able to successfully complete this mission in our final runs. To determine the number of candles, we placed a temperature sensor in front of each fan (and under the tin foil) and we set it to read a candle if the temperature it detected was above 100°F (the room was roughly 75°F). This worked occasionally on our runs. The biggest issue was that the temperature sensors had to be almost perfectly lined up over the candles to work which we weren't always able to do in the final run.

Our propulsion system is comprised of 4 mecanum wheels and 4 motors. We chose mecanum wheels due to their unique ability to translate. However, due to our center of mass not being aligned with the geometric center of our OTV, we were unable to translate our OTV. This led us to use our mecamun wheels as regular wheels which had lower friction than ordinary wheels. However, in the end, this didn't cause us too many problems. The motors were 12V and controlled by a PWM modulated H-bridge motor controller which gave us complete control of the direction and speed of each motor. This was very useful as our OTV turned best by only turning the front two wheels in opposite directions. Additionally, we used the PWM to increase the power to our back left motor, to compensate for our OTV veering left while moving forward.