#1: Course
- First, we decided on how the course that our robot would have to navigate through would be designed. We created it to resemble a robot leading people through a building after a disaster like an earthquake or fire has hit.
- We decided to incorporate colored circles on the floor of the course, resembling holes in the floor, to utilize light sensors, and these circles resembled holes in the floor. However, we found that the light sensors were unable to detect the colored circles, so instead, we added a red 3D object to simulate fire in a building hallway.
#2: Robot design (in order of use)
In terms of deciding on what robot we would use and how we would code that robot, we used many attempts of trial and error to see how the different robots would work with all of the sensors needed and how efficient and productive coding would be for these robots. We eventually decided to use the BuggyBot. BuggyBot had all the sensors that were required and was pretty small in size to allow for an easier time to develop the course and code.
#3: Research paper
After we had figured out what course and robot we were using, and how to code the robot effectively for this project, we moved on to the research paper.
For the research paper, we first began by generally researching the topic of robots used in disaster relief, and then came up with the research question: For fires and earthquakes around the world, how do robots help out search-and-rescue groups?
Within this research question, we together created an outline for how we wanted our paper to be structured and then divided the sections up among ourselves to create the best use of our time.
After each writing a section of the research paper, we all thoroughly edited and revised this paper to a point where we were all happy with the result.
#4: Web Portfolio
For the web portfolio, we all decided to split up the work again between the project summary, definitions, and pseudocode.
This was an efficient decision, as we each worked for the same amount of time on each part to get the website done three times as fast.