Robotics

Robotics:

Robotics is an interdisciplinary combination of computer science, engineering and design with the purpose of constructing robots that one can easily maneuver. Robots are created as intelligent machines that benefit the every day life of human beings.

Computer Science:

Computer Science utilizes a mix of math, science, and engineering to study and design computers, algorithms, software, and databases. Computer scientists can create programs for many uses.

Virtual Robot

Using RobotC Virtual Worlds, we designed a virtual course to test the programming of our robot. On the course we designed on the right, we tested the ability for our robot to react to obstacles and follow the line to "safety."

Code

Here's an overview of our code for the virtual robot. The while loop and if statement ensures that the color sensor no the robot senses the color black in front if it, it will keep going. If it senses white, the robot turns.

Code Virtual Robot

Robot Simulation Video

Here you can see our robot in action in the virtual world!

Simulation robot

Redbot Robot

Redbot

The Redbot was built with IR sensors and bumper switches to stimulate escaping a destroyed building. It can follow a path and successfully avoid obstacles and continue on its way. However, it has a "blind spot" in the middle of its bumper sensors that it frequently gets stuck on. To circumvent this issue, we changed the angle of the bumpers sensors so the sensors would activate at any angle.

Redbot Code

Using the Arduino, we took input from the IR sensors and the bumpers in order to ensure that the Redbot stayed on the line while also not bumping into any obstacles. Essentially, the IR sensors detected the position of the Redbot relative to the line, and the bumper sensors helped prevent collisions.

Code Redbot

IMG_2935.MOV

Redbot Video

Watch our Redbot in action!

Tamiya Tracked Robot

TinkerCAD Diagram

We created a TinkerCAD model to demonstrate the functionality of the Tamiya Tracked vehicle. It helped us map out the pins and facilitated the building process.

Modified Tamiya Tracked Robot

The base design of the final vehicle is the Tamiya Tracked Robot kit, a single motor vehicle with treads instead of wheels and an on-off switch connected to batteries to turn the motor on and off. We modified it by adding an Arduino, breadboard, and a motor controlto control the actuation of the added dual motors. We also changed the treads to wheels fashioned out of the original sprockets wrapped individually with the treads. Treads are usually used in order to distribute the weight of a vehicle more evenly along a surface, but since the surface that we are navigating on is solid and the robot itself is light, we deemed there to be no reason to use the treads. Unfortunately, we really struggled with the wiring of the boards and the programming of the sensors and the motors. In this way, technical issues detained our progress and made our robot dysfunctional. In the end, we concluded that the reason for our robot not working was that the motor control IC was malfunctioning and wasn't routing current in the way which its documentation indicated it should.

Robot Code

Take a look at the code and how it works!

Code Tracked Bot

Design Process

Teamwork

Our team used a white board and wrote down each of the tasks and assigned it to each of the group members. We were able to successfully work together and complete the tasks this way. By working on several things simultaneously, we were able to be very efficient.

Modular Design Process

We worked on everything at the same time. On one hand it was very efficient, but at some points we were all tired from working constantly on something.

Research Paper

Research Paper Week 2

Our research paper is about robots in disaster recovery. It's organized by type of robot, which is dictated by the medium through which it travels in (air, land, sea), and also what type of action that this robot would preform (search and rescue, scouting, delivery or resources, assess threats).