Evaluation Question Responses

1. Describe the plan your group used to build the project.

Our plan to build the project was to initially create a way to divide all the work up amongst our group members so that everyone’s task load is equal. Additionally, we found out what each person was good at and assigned specific tasks tailored to those skills. For example, Kian and Johnovan both had good ideas of coding so our group decided to make them work on the robot while the rest of the group went to work on the research paper. However, as a group we would try to make each other understand the code since we would screenshare the RobotC program and everyone would watch and give their input on how to improve the code.

2. Describe the process your group used to accomplish the task.

In order to accomplish our tasks, our group met through Zoom and Virbela both with the entire class and individually. At the beginning of each session we would plan what each member of the group should be accomplishing during that time. We all had individual parts of the group paper to research, draft, and finalize, and the whole group collaborated and edited the code together as Kian shared his screen to the group through Zoom.

3. Describe how the principles you used to build the project apply to the engineering fields you studied.

Coding the robot applies to computer engineering by showing how software can influence hardware, such as a move command making the wheels on the robot turn. Writing about the field of robotics’ past, present, and future as well as what’s influencing and can influence the field gives people a good sense of where progress in the field is and can go. The website presents all of this information, including the details such as the actual code along with it in action making the bot navigate a course.

4. Each member’s role in the project.

We each had a few roles in the project, and some parts were completed all together. Johnovan completed the introduction and researched future developments for search and rescue robots, assisted with the coding, and formatted the research paper. Charlotte researched and wrote about the history of search and rescue robots, found useful photos, and created citations for the references. Quinn researched setbacks that are involved in the development of search and rescue robots and also drafted and finalized conclusions for the research paper. Faith researched examples of search and rescue robots that have been used for disasters in recent years, she also created citations for the research paper. Kian also researched examples of the robots and was in charge of typing the code for the robot; he also created the Google Site and the flow chart.. We all built the course for the robot as Kian shared his screen and we collaborated on the code to perfect it and make sure it was successful.

5. Describe the successes and the obstacles your team encountered and how your team overcame the obstacles.

We had plenty of obstacles to overcome when we began our project. For starters, we had trouble because we were using a preset course within RobotC that used lines on the ground instead of 3 dimensional walls, so our sensors were not picking up on the obstacles in the way. This caused us many problems and led to our eventual decision to build our own course. After we built our course, it was time to perfect the code. The system is slightly inconsistent, so the same exact code would result in many different outcomes, which was frustrating and caused some trouble for our coding efforts. In addition, finding the perfect “wait1Msec” values in order to make the robot turn 90 degrees was a challenge as the system was slightly inaccurate and inconsistent, so a lot of minute adjustments had to be made throughout the coding process. These obstacles led to our successes with the program, when our program was able to successfully make it through the course when the code was perfect and all of the right conditions were in place. Also, our research paper was a success as we were able to conduct our research and seamlessly compile a cohesive paper about our topic of search and rescue robots throughout the 21st century. We excelled in communication and problem solving throughout the whole process despite the challenges we faced.

6. What would your next steps be to improve your project?

To improve our project, we could spend more time in finding a perfect 90 degree angle as well as having the robot be consistent with its turns. We found out that without changing the code, the degree at which the robot turns varies each time we run the trial. As a group, we concluded that it is due to an inaccuracy of the program, and not the code. This is a major problem because each time the robot turns, the robot does not go straight, and the degree of error becomes so erroneous that the robot will eventually hit the wall. When we run the robot, the robot ends up hitting a different part of the course each time. So, if we had more time we could find a way to counteract the inconsistency, or just adjust the code to use a more consistent robot. Some more steps to improve the project would be to change the code so that it would not get stuck in dead ends. Initially, we wanted to make our map have dead ends and code the robot to scan all of its surroundings and find the path out of the dead end. We decided that coding that part would take too much time and decided to make the robot scan left and right only to navigate through a simple maze structure. Again, if we had more time, we could have coded the robot to do such a task and navigate through a more intricate maze.

7. Describe the lessons that you learned and how you will apply these lessons to future projects.

In this short week, we have already improved our ability to compile a list of tasks to complete. We used Trello to organize our tasks and distribute them evenly. When we first started out, our list was not complete. As we went along, we discovered that there were other tasks that we had not originally thought of. Fortunately, our team was able to work together and quickly assigned each to a member. However, our work should go a lot smoother and we should be able to finish quicker in future projects, as we now have an idea of what we will be dealing with.

8. Knowing what you know now, how would you start your project differently?

Now that we have experience, we would be able to manage our to-do list and complete it much more efficiently. We would not waste time on other sensors and trying to avoid the black lines in the given robot courses. Now that we know how to use the sonar sensor and code for turns, we should be able to complete the project in a significantly less amount of time. Knowing how to build our own course should help cut the amount of time needed for this project as well, as we struggled a bit on figuring out how to do so. We would also be able to build a slightly more complicated course, as we would have more time to plan it out. We could improve our current code to make the robot more consistent, as well as possibly make the code for the robot more complicated to match the new course. We also spent some time figuring out the IEEE format, so we should be able to reduce the amount of time needed to complete the research paper. With our newfound knowledge, we would be able to start our project much more efficiently and should complete the project in a significantly shorter time.