Design Process

When it came to designing the course, we wanted to create a maze that would show our robot being able to navigate its way to the end using the measures of distance through the ultrasonic sensor. We took inspiration from previous years' groups. We also varied up the hallway shapes and tried to incorporate many turns to make it more complicated. During the coding process, we also changed the codes to accomodate to the course until we found a successful runthrough.

First, we laid out what we wanted the robot to do. We were required to use at least two sensors on the robot, so we decided on an ultrasonic sensor and a gyroscope. We figured that the ultrasonic sensor would be the best for our purposes and that the gyroscope would get us as close to a 90-degree and 180-degree turn as possible. We then wrote out our movement functions and tested them until they compiled. After that, we added in the sensors with a similar process. After much trial and error, we finally had working code.

For the research paper, we first decided to come up with the main talking points, or sections. When thinking about the use of robotics in disaster relief, our first thought was to include sections leading up to how robotics is able to be used today and then conclude with the future of usings robots more frequently. This allowed us to create the sections: Introduction, History of technology, History of Technology in Disaster Relief, Examples of Robots in Disaster Relief, Future of Using Robots, and the Conclusion. For the second, third, and fourth sections, we created subsections based on our research. For the history of technology, we divided it by time periods and explained the different inventions made and their connection to robotics today. For the history of technology in disaster relief, we made subsections using examples of tech that were not sprecifically robots and how the connection of using technology would help create the robots designed in the next section. For the examples, each subsection was a specific robot created for disaster relief. Each person took assigned sections to finish the paper.