This project was designed to provide a hands-on experience through developing a prototype robot that carries out a set of tasks autonomously.

Object Avoidance

For the first milestone, the objective was to travel 20 feet in the maze while minimising collisions with walls. Our robot achieved this to a good degree by utilising 5 ultrasonic distance sensors. These sensors were placed at the left, front-left, front, front-right, and right sides of the robot . By using the inputs from these sensors, the robot was able to determine the distance to an obstacle, and to adjust accordingly. If one of the side or diagonal sensors determined a wall to be too close, it would turn the robot in the opposite direction. If the front sensor detected a wall to be too close, the robot would turn 90 degrees towards the side that had a higher sensor reading. At the time, the robot successfully performed this task, with minimal collisions.

Block Pickup 

For the second milestone, the objective was for the robot to enter the loading zone, pick up a block, exit the loading zone, and drop off the block. For this milestone, we were allowed to manually control the robot using bluetooth. Our mechanism featured a scoop, which would sweep the block into the body of the robot, such that it would no longer be touching the floor. Our robot entered the loading zone, and rotated such that it was facing the block. It then moved forward and touched the block with the bottom of the scoop. The scoop’s motor was then activated, and it tried to push the block into the body of the robot. However, as the block was touching the lip of the scoop, it did not move during the first few attempts. After realigning the robot such that it was no longer touching the block, the block was successfully picked up. The robot then travelled outside of the loading zone, opened the scoop, and reversed to lay the block on the ground. Although it took a few attempts to pick up the block, we uncovered a critical issue with the design of the scoop, and produced a method to compensate for this problem.

Final Milestone 

For the third milestone, the objective was to place the robot in a random location in the maze, have the robot determine its starting position, travel to the loading zone to pick up the block, and transfer the block to a predetermined drop off location, and successfully drop the block. The robot struggled to complete the task perfectly, but managed to eventually complete the task with some assistance. 

MIE444 - LED Boxfinder 3000 Final Video

MIE444 - LED Boxfinder 3000 Final Report