Day 18 Presentation Day

02/14/2012

           Every team (the whole class) who had participated in the firebot contest were presenting their own robot today.

Presentation by other teams:

 

 

 

Our Team's presentation:

 

Somehow, we got excited in talking about our firebot and we went overtime...

 

 

 

The most common recommandations from all teams was time management. It seemed like every team was having trouble with preparation period being too short.

 

On the last day of class, it was very interesting to hear about other teams' strategies and designs as everyone was trying to keep their own secrets. A lot could be learned from other teams' design and I wished i would have thought of those when our team was designing our robot. It would have greatly improved our robot performance.

Project 2 "FireBot"

Tools and materials:   2 VEX robot kits

Sensors:  flame sensor, line sensor, 2 ultra sonic sensors

Preparation time: approximate 2 weeks

Persons per team: 2

Name of the robot: Theseus





              At the beginning of the project, our team started out with modifying the VEX RC robot that we had built during the second week.

The first modification was simple. The antenna was removed and the encoders, sensors, and sonars were added onto the robot.

Flame sensor

Line sensor

Ultra sonic sonar

 

The robot then went through a simple test run to test the sensors and sonars, ensuring that they can detect black lines, objects, and flame.

 

After installing all the vital components, it was time to think about strategy.

 

The team's strategy started out simple, hit no wall. The strategy was to use two sonars to align the robot perpendicular to the wall. Then the robot will nevigate through the maze moving in straight line and turning with right angle. After enter each room sequentially, the robot will detect the flame and blow it out.

 

 

After the team decided to use two sonars, the robot was once again being modified. A longer bar is installed at the front of the robot and the sonars were spreaded out as far as possible for a better alignment with the wall.

 

However, the plan didn't work out well. The robot had a more difficult time going into the rooms because of the extended beam. If the turns or moves were not precision, the robot often ended up hitting the wall.

 

Meanwhile, the fan was built, and the team decided to put the fan on a rotatable platform for an easier aim at the flame instead of moving the whole robot.

          A fourth modification was implemented to the robot to install the fan turret, to shrink the firebot's size, and put on a start button.

After some successful trials, the team decided upon using this configuration for the firebot. A finalized version of the robot has been made, in which some compnents had been changed for easier repairs.

 

 

From now on, instead of doing hardware improvements, we focus much more on improveing the code for the program.

 

Occasionally, the robot still bumped into the wall because of the limitation of the sonars and the design of the maze for which they would then create a lot of traps for the robot ..

 

Though the robot did manage to nevigate throught the maze and find the flame for most of the time.

Now, with the program finished and the hardware installed, it was up to the day of contest to do more field testing.

 

 

Some field tests that had been done on the day of the contest:

Fortunately, the field testing did show 1 of the weakened joint, so that the team was able to finish the repair before competition started.

Actual contest footage:

First attempt.

 

Replica of the second attempt.

 

 

Although the robot failed to blow out the candle in its first attempt, it did blow out the candle in its second attempt. Victory!

 

As the conclusion to this project, the team's robot was a great success. Two weeks of non-stop testing and hard works had paid off. Althought there are still room for improvements, for a robot that needed to be completed within two weeks, the robot had the best that it could give.

 

Day 16 Competition Day!!!

02/09/2013


Competition's location: California State University, Long Beach, Vivian Engineering Technology
                                      Center

All preparation had been completed on Friday. The only thing left to be complete was field testing and manual calibration.

We had named our robot as Theses, the great hero who defeated the minotaur in a maze according to greek's legend. Good Luck Theses!

Hmm... No good, the distance is forshortened and the robot is stuck at the intersection.

OH MY! the stabilizer of the turret fell off after trials of trials with collision calibration. Luckly, this happened before the competition instead of during the competition.

A successful nevigation! Nevigated through 3 rooms and found the candle. Unfortunately it was too far for the fan to blow it out, and the flame was too weak to be detected by our sensor after the first attempt.

Success!!

 

Two weeks of hard works finally paid off!

Day 15 & Day 15.5 Final Test with modified strategy

02/07/2013   &   02/08/2013

            The team's greatest challenge at this point was to refine the strategy so that the robot could move on the intended course ( straight and perpendicular to the wall if not turning).

            A new strategy was made to command the robot to recalibrate itself after moving a certain distance closeer to the wall so that the calibration error could be further minimized. The reasoning behind the reiterative calibration was that as the sonar is closer to the object, the reading becomes more sensitive.

 

 

Most of the nevigation traps and sonar blind spots were at the middle of the maze where the room's entrance and the corners would have a devastating effect.

           Furthermore, the team borrowed another strategy of calibrating with collusion with the wall as the back up if sonar calibration failed.

          As you may have noticed, the wheels were taped with electric tap to increase traction with the ground.

         And finally, the team was able to nevigate through room 3 and 4 using improved strategy.

Day 14 Combo Testing with nevigation and extinguishing flame.

02/06/2013

          Today's goal was to complete a successful nevigation run through all four room with a success rate of at least 80%, being able to detect the candle and going close to it. (If the flame got put out, it would be much much better than our expectation.)

 

Unlike what we had expected, the fan turret and the flame detection went expectional good. However, the nevigation success rate was still below 80%.

 

As shown in the video, the robot managed to nevigate through the first two room, but the path was not straight or perpendicular to the wall as we had expected.

 

After nevigating through the second room, the path which the robot was taking had been greatly deviated from the original course. The robot continously hit the walls on the side and failed to recover from the mistake.

Day 13 Testing fire extinguish mechanism; more nevigation testing

02/05/2013

          Over the weekend, a fan had been built by the team to extinguish the candle in the competition. The fan blades and the motor was taken from an old portable fan while the wind tunnet was made of chips container.

 

The fan was mounted on a turret as prototype for testing.

 

 

 

During the class, the fan turret was installed onto the chassis and a minor modification was done to the rest of the upper compartment to make room for the turret.

A button is also added to the robot for easier press-start.

 

 

The fan's turret would scan close to 160 degrees in front of it.

 

***Front view***

***Rear view***

***Side view***

 

The nevigation test for the day was not successful. Although the robot had been able to navigate all 4 rooms individually on saturday when the team was testing the robot in a classmate house,  the test to nevigate all 4 rooms in one try was filled with flaws such as foreshortened moves and turns.

 

Hopefully by next day, most of the problems will be debugged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 12 Firebot strategy planning and hardware modifications

01/31/2013

          Today's goal was to come up with a strategy to reduce the chance for the robot to hit the wall, so that the it could nevigate through the maze smoothly.

         After a few discussions and exchanging ideas, the group agreed to use two ultra sonic sensor to perpendicularly line-up the robot with a wall so that it will always start moving in a straight line normal to the wall after it make a 90 degree turn.

          Since this type of calibration required at least two ultra sonic sonar, the group perchased another sonar from the robotic team and installed it onto the robot.

The twin-sonar scheme worked fine when the sonars are installed at the left and right front end of the forward bumper. Yet the reading unit for the sonar are in inches,  There exist an error in the sonar that the robot would not always be straightened.

 

Therefore, the forward bumperer is added with a longer beam that will extend the sonar even further apart to minimaze the tolerace.

 

When the robot is tested after modication, the result from using the same code poofed that extending the sonar further apart will increase the accuracy.