24 February 2009

This is aMAZEing!!


Project Mindstorm: First Attempt 

Theme:                       Maze

Robot Name:            aMAZEing 

  

aMAZEing

 

 

OBJECTIVE

Try to find a way home, remove any obstacles along the track and avoid dead end path as fast as we can. 

ROBOT OVERVIEW 

We had planned to create a maze solver robot that move on a specific trail and controlled by sound to change the directions. aMAZEing starts at the starting point and try to finds a right path to go home. There will be some obstacles during the path and dead ends that aMAZEing will encounter such as a bunch of rock and walls. Supplied with object remover, aMAZEing can clear the obstacles with one powerful strike. Dead end created in every junctions and lead aMAZEing to decides the right path. By using a sound sensor, aMAZEing will instructed to turn right or left at the junction by blowing the whistle in high or low pitch. 

aMAZEing should constructed as narrow as it can to save the space for the trail. The ordinary transport style design was selected to provide a free and smooth movement while crossing the trail.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Initially, the sound sensor unable to recognized the instruction to turn left or right because the dBa value was not set properly. Thus, aMAZEing just move straight and ignored the whistle sound to turn direction and lead to the dead end path. Modification was made through programming data to reset the dBa value as low as it can, so even the lowest pitch of sound can still be detected.

aMAZEing had difficulties in turning right since it was created as left-handed robot. Then, we just realized that our programming for the direction was a parallel block, which just allows the motor to turn left instead of dual-direction. We replaced the single motor blocks with switch block (sound sensor as the stimuli), that make the sound input to recognized high sound whistle (for turning right command) or low sound whistle (for turning left command).

  

 

Front View
 

 

MODIFICATION

We will try to utilize all sensors available to make aMAZEing much more amazing in solving the tasks. The design should be replace with better ‘intelligente’ design to portrays actual AI abilities that aMAZEing had.

That's all for this week. Until next time. ¡Hasta luego!

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