Countdown to the last day 2/15

Today would serve to be one of the final days in class. Our instructed covered how to make a professional presentation. Our team would have to make a presentation about the robot we entered into the competition. He covered things we should and should not do while presenting. The major points we to repeat important points several times to send the message. As far as the visual presentation, the main points were to keep the fonts large and a high contrast in color to the background for viewers to read. Our presentation will need to be about 15 minutes long and contain a few set points. The required topics to be cover were to have a title slide with group members names, the date, and location, an introduction slide which shows all topics being covered, build, programming, a video demo, testing, conclusion, and suggestions.

Final Presentation 2/16

Today each group presented their robots. Below is our groups powerpoint presentation.

Vex Bot Competition 2/12

Today is the big competition. There was a total of 10 teams competing. This competition was held on the second floor in the Engineering building on the Cal State Fullerton campus. The exhibition began with an introduction by a member from the Robotics of Southern California Club. The day of the competition we still had to remove the pauses in our code. We borrow a classmates laptop to download the revised code to our robot, but the robot was not responding to the program. At the very last second we have to reprogram the robot from scratch which included downloading the master files.
During our first run, our robot did not straighten out after the first scan or after the first can was rejected. After a quick restart, the same problem occurred. The target can was just out of the scanning area. For our third attempt, the cans were moved and we ran out of time.
Out of the 10 groups, our team placed in 4th. While our robot did not have its best performance this day, it did have a decent showing.

Vex Bot Last Chance 2/11

Today will be our last day to complete our robot. We will need to make any final changes to our code and robot before the end of the day. We believe that the components of the robot are sufficient to complete all tasks required to complete the objective. At the end of the day, theoretically, our robot will be able to navigate the entire field to locate a can as well as place the can into the corresponding color zone. Below is a video of our robot starting from the green zone searching for a blue can. The first can the robot encounters is a green can. The robot knows this is the wrong color so it rejects the can and continues searching for the blue can. The blue can is the second can is comes across. The robot then attempts to center itself and proceed across the field to the blue zone. At the end, the line sensor was unable to detect the first black line but does catch the second. The color sensor had already crossed the blue section so the robot knew it was in the blue section and dropped the can.

Video Coming Soon

Tomorrow we will test our robot in a tournament of about 10 entries. Stay tuned for results.

Vex Bot Part 5 2/10

Today was supposed to be the last day for us to complete our robot. At the end of the day we were only able to have our robot find a can, determine the color and reject wrong color cans. In the video below, the robot is looking for a blue can. When the robot finds the green can it drops it behind but it just so happens to start in the green zone so it looks as if the robot was programmed to take the green can to the green zone. This was just luck. As you can see, we still need to work on the turning of the robot so it ends up facing the same direction as it started.

With this code, the only way we would be able to complete the project would be if the can we were searching for was in line with the ending color. We still need to add code to tell the robot which zone it starts and where the ending zone is in relation to its starting position.
Our instructor surprised us with an extra day to work on our robot before we needed to compete. We will need to add the mapping properties to our code tomorrow.

Vex Bot Part 4 2/9

Today we tackled the mission of determining the can color and what to do when the wrong color is detected. In the video, the robot is looking for a red can. It finds a green can and attempts to remove the can from its path. After watching the robot in action, we see that the robot is not turning around enough when dropping the can. This will need to be changed in the code. Also the robot is continuing to drop the can so we need to get out of that loop to proceed with the search of the correct can.

For additional accuracy, we will have the color sensor read the can at least two times to confirm the correct color. Once both readings are the same then the robot will be able to continue its mission.

In this test you will see the robot find a green can a reject it. As you can see if the can is not directly in the center of the arms, the sonar value will never read the limit for the arms to close. We will add a function that will close the arms a little each time to force the can into the sonars range. We also added the black line detection in the trial. At the end of the video you can see the robot get stuck once the line sensor is over the black tape line. We will have to write some code to tell what the robot to do when the black line is reached.

Vex Bot Update 2/8

Today we changed how the robot turns to scan for the can. It will still pause between scans but when returning to the center, it will be smooth. Below is a short video of our robot detecting a can and the color sensor is reading blue. We both agreed that after the can is detected to approach the can a little faster. Our next step will be to have the robot read the output of the color sensor so it knows if the can is the desired color.