Robotics

VexIQ Robot

The VexIQ robot is designed and programed to to autonomously create a simple polymer, or GAK, from three ingredients: borax, glue, and colored water. We designed ours to have three seperate containers along with a mixing element. The first arm pours the borax from one cup into the bottom cup containing the colored water, and then returns to it's original position. Next, a second cup pours glue into the same cup, now containing water and borax, the arm waits for a few moments before returning to position in order to allow the glue to enter the final cup. Finally, the solution is mixed in the bottom cup until slime is formed. 

We first built the mechanical components of the robot ensuring it had the physical capabilities to accomplish the task before adding code to get it to operate autonomously. 

Zumi AI

The goal of the Zumi Ai car was to program it to be able to navigate out of a possibly dangarous building.  The Zumi utalizes front sensors to sense if there is an object right in front of it and then navigate away. We initially started by simply programming it to turn 90 degrees and ten continue on, but we eventually realized that it would be more functional if it first backed away from the object, then turned, and finally continued into open space.

Arduino RedBot

The Arduino RedBot's goal was to accurately trace a line path on the ground and drive along the path. It does so by detecting color changes on the ground due to three different sensors positioned  on the front bottom of the car. It also detects based on thickness and contrast of the line. We initially coded the bot to follow a path that we had created using our own, thicker tape on a white background, which later on caused some issues as the path set for testing was on a thinner line with a grey background. This caused our bot not to be able to follow the path as the contrast and thickness was different. While we were able to recode it based on the conditions for testing, however while our bot did work to some extent, we were not as successful as previously. 

JD Humanoid

The JD Humanoid bot is an AI facial recognition robot programed to recognize a human victim in a damaged building. We first coded our bot to walk around looking for a potential target. In order to recognize the actual victim as being human the bot was trained based on pattern recognition as well as color recognition. We trained ours on a Spiderman drawing, with it eventually being able to see it in a building and lock on the target. 

Tamiya Tracked Vehicle

The Tamiya tracked vehicle uses a Red Board controller running programmed logic that reads its ultrasonic sensor (distance) and bumper sensor (contact) to detect obstacles ahead. Based on that sensor input, the program decides a behavior (drive forward, turn, or reverse) which it sends as commands to the drive motors. Those motors turn the tracks, and differential track speed steers the vehicle through the damaged-building course, with the sense-decide-act loop repeating continuously as new obstacles appear.