Senior Design Project - Design Consideration

Design Consideration

To create a succesful robot, it will need to visualize, conceptualize, and execute its decision. There were three major design considerations for our project. We had to determine what microcontroller to use, how to sense a move being played by the human, and when to allow the AI to play it's move.

Microcontroller

We will use an microcontroller to process the information gathered from our players move. This information will be put into an algorithm to determine the robot's next move. We can then use three different algorithms to represent different difficulty levels for game play.

Arduino MEGA
TI TIVA C-Series TM4C123GXL Launchpad

Disk Detection

In order for the software to understand where the disks are placed, there has to be some system that updates the memory as a player takes their turn. There are three ways we thought of doing this.

Human controller - buttons to select desired column allowing software to process accurate data
Laser sensor - a laser transmitter/receiver system would be able to detect when the column is chosen
Force sensor - a force sensitive resistor that is able to detects a change in weight for each column

Disk Dispenser

The dispenser will be used once the software makes a decision where the disk should be placed. This system will be used to deposit the disk into the column it was selected to be in.

Gravity System - a disk will be roll past a series of gates above each column until the desired gate is opened
Belt and Pulley System - stepper motor used to move the disk dispenser above the desired column where the disk can be released

AI System

We need to create a set of commands that will inform the computer how to play the game and determine it's next moves. We would like to have varying levels of difficulties. Below is ways we could accomplish this.

Random Number Generator
Simple Heuristic Function
Minimax Algorithm

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