The Mechanical Engineering methods we used:
1. We sketched out the robot's basic layout, gathering ideas from members of the team.
2. We reverse engineered the RedBot to see how to optimally hook up our sensors while still keeping in mind our own robot's layout.
3. We removed the center wheel attachments to reduce friction with the ground and thus improve efficiency.
The Computer Science methods we used:
1. We thought of ideas of what the robot should do when it encounters the brick or detects a line.
2. We formulated these ideas into quasi "if" statements.
3. Turn the "if" statements into proper code to make the robot do what we want.
Other relations to engineering and robotics subjects that we learned in class:
- Our vehicle is designed to be autonomous and is equipped with actuators (the motors) and effectors (the wheels).
- When designing our vehicle we took into consideration how the sensors would work together (sensor fusion) for the robot to perceive information.
- Because we have three line sensors, the robot is able to follow the line whether it drifts to the right or left of the line. With these three sensors coming together to focus on one picture, the robot is able to better understand its environment.
- Our robot also has two touch sensors and a ultrasonic sensor to detect an object (in this case, a brick). Because the robot is equipped with two touch sensors, it can tell whether the brick is located right or left of the vehicle, and when both sensors are activated, the robot can tell that the brick is in front of it.
- The ultrasonic sensors working with the touch sensors can tell the robot when the brick is nearing the front of the vehicle. Then, the vehicle can move either to the right or left and feel the brick to determine where it is exactly. The ultrasonic sensor is very useful in the case that the brick is too thin to set off the touch sensors because it can still tell that there is an object in front of it. In this case, for the best utility, the ultrasonic sensor would need to be placed in between the touch sensors for it to cover the area that the touch sensors are not located. The ultrasonic sensor can work with the touch sensors to handle more obscure obstacles, like a thin brick.