Final Class Blog

Robotics has come to an end after a semester of hard work and programming. I have learned many new things such as robot construction, programming the NXT, and using each type of sensor.
On the subject of robot construction, the way I would go about building a robot now is very different than if I were to build a robot 6 months ago. I have learned many construction techniques that make a strong, stable, reliable, and interchangeable robot. To do this, you can't just slap a bunch of parts together. You must plan out everything and think about how each aspect will affect the stability of the robot. Another concept I learned was modularity. Modularity is the ability to take off one piece of the robot without having to take the whole robot apart. This came in handy for many of the challenges where we modified the robot extensively to get it to perform the tasks better. The more modular the robot was, the greater chance of success it would have because it wouldnt break and it would go straight always.

Another thing new to me was programming. I had never programmed before and this class taught me the basics. It taught me that the robot does exactly what you tell it to do. No more or no less. This was frustrating at times because you had to really think about why the program was not working and sometimes use new blocks which you were not accustomed to. I also learned that when programming, it is important to label everything such as the values above the turns. This serves the purpose of letting you know how many degrees your robot turns without having to open up the block and check. Another thing I found useful in programming was the use of my blocks. My blocks give you the advantage of having a set of blocks all crammed into one block which you can use over and over again. This save me a lot of time while programming and if I had to change a turn because it was consistently bad, I could change it once and all of the turns would be fixed.

The next thing I learned was sensors. Sensors give the robot more of a human-like attitude. They let your robot have senses such as light, sound, ultrasonic (something which us humans can't even do), rotation, and touch. Using these was essential to completing the challenges as without them, the robot would be very inaccurate and could not change its plans on the spot. Each sensor had its little quirks which had to be worked out in the investigations. This was shown in the ultrasonic sensor when we found the shape of the area of detection. My sensor was actually reading a different area than the rest of the classes ultrasonic sensor. This made me take the ultrasonic readings in the challenges into closer consideration to make sure my robot could still perform all of the tasks

Through robotics, I have learned how to apply the areas of math, science, and technology into real world applications such as robotics. To do robotics, you have to think logically, make different calculations for distance and motor rotations, apply physics to build a better robot, and program the robot using technology. This class has really helped me seen the connection between these three areas to the real world which leads me to my next point about communication between classmates to succeed.

Communication, reasoning, and collaboration were essential in this course. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to accomplish as much, or help fellow students finish challenges. This was shown when we worked together on investigations and even when we were working alone, we collaborated so that we could get across the finish line and work as a team while working at the same time individually. We communicated our results through the blogs which are accessible to anyone in the world. This helps people to get ideas and build on them or help a struggling student somewhere in the world. Finally, reasoning was very important because as mentioned before, robots do exactly what they are told. You have to reason through the problems and think why the robot is doing what it is doing. My reasoning skills have improved by taking robotics and solving problems with various robots.

All in all, Robotics class was a good learning experience in which I learned many skills that will help me for the rest of my life. I learned to think logically, communicate, program, and apply things im learning in other classes to the real world.

Patrol Robot: Continue E-Stop Challenge

Today I finished the last of the continue phase for the patrol robot. In this section, the challenge was to create a robot that would stop when there is a loud noise. This would be useful in the real world if someone yelled stop and the robot would be able to stop. This challenge was fairly easy for me because I had already completed the emergency stop anytime activity with Kenny. To do this, I had to drag another program beam from the beginning of the program and put in a wait for sound sensor block, a stop move block and a stop block. At the bottom of the page, it had a segment on the calibrate block so I looked into it and it seems to be a pretty useful block. This block can recalibrate the sensors mid-program to compensate for motor noise or background noise. To do this, I put the calibrate block in after the motor block to account for any noise from the motor.

Ch. 17-- Logic

This chapter took a while to fully understand. The logic block is an advanced block with many uses. THe logic block takes a yes/no response from other blocks via data wires and interprets them based on what you tell it to do. The logic block has a drop down menu with four options: And, Or, Xor, and Not. For the and option, both responses must be yes for a final yes to be generated from the logic block. For the or option, only one response must be yes for a final response of yes. For the Xor option, only one plug can be yes for a final yes value. For the not option, plug A is reversed and plug B will be disabled. Data wires must be connected for the logic block to work. The Logic block has 3 data ports. A port A, a port B, and a yes/no output. Take a sensor or anything else you want to use logic on, and and take a data wire and connect it to a or b.

Patrol Robot: Continue Lamp Challenge

This part of the continue phase involved putting a lamp onto the robot and having it flash when the door is open. Also, you had to incorporate a my block into the program in the lamp part. To do this, I had to add a lamp to my robot and set up a new program. My program is shown below for both the my block and the main program. To get the programming right, I used lamp then wait blocks set for 1 second then the lamp would go off then wait for 1 second. All of these lamp and wait blocks were put into a loop and set to stop when the touch sensor is pressed.

Patrol Robot: Continue Bluetooth Challenge

The first part of the patrol robot continue phase was bluetooth communication. It recommended looking at another page which explained all of the bluetooth techniques so I looked at that and figured out how to get the bluetooth connected and write simple programs with that. The challenge for this section was to have the robot detect if a door is open or closed and then send a message to another nxt saying that the door is open or closed. This program involved using data wires and bluetooth send and receive blocks. The main part of the program with the bluetooth blocks is shown below if you want to see it. The receiving robot had a simple receive message block with a data wire going to a display block.

Day 4: Obstacle course

Thinking back on the obstacle course, I thought I did pretty well. I ended up finishing a day early and my robot was able to complete all of the challenges. I had a fairly stable robot design which curved to the right a little bit but I compensated for this by changing the turns and starting position. My program was also very organized because of my use of my blocks. This saved me a lot of time and trouble in the long run because I didnt have to repeat parts of the program and troubleshoot if one of those repeats went wrong. I unfortunately got some points off of my program because I didn't label my program. I ended up winning the most accurate course completion because I used the strategy of slow and steady. All of my turns were very precise. There is a video on the Day 3 blog for anyone interested.

Patrol Robot: Contemplate

The purpose of the patrol robot is to detect if the doors in a building are open or closed. The robot makes use of all the sensors to do this. It starts out going forward until the light sensor detects a dark line. Then, it waits again until there is light to make sure the robot crosses the line. The robot then turns left and uses a switch block to detect whether the distance is greater or less than 15 cm. If the distance is less, the door is closes and the ultrasonic sensor is detecting the door. If the door is open, the ultrasonic sensor detects the back wall which is greater than 15 cm. If the door is closed, the robot turns right and proceeds to the next black line. If the door is open, it plays an alert sound until the touch sensor is pressed. A loop is placed around all of this to make the robot continue this behavior forever. This saves time because you don't have to re-write the whole program every time you want the robot to repeat these actions. The program shown gives you an idea of the block used.