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Selecting robot missions to run

The Into Orbit robot game has 16 missions and our goal was to accomplish as many of these as we can in the allotted 2.5 minutes. Each mission is designated with the number of points a team can get for accomplishing the task. We determined which missions to work on based on the following criteria: Missions that are  - closest to the base - closer to other missions - can score lot of points - easy and quick to accomplish - can be accomplished using passive or combined attachment The base is the area on the robot game board where we are allowed to touch the robot without being penalized for it. We chose missions that are close to base, so that our robot can return to base quickly for attachment change over. Selecting missions that are close to each other allows our robot to do multiple missions in one run without having to return to base. Selecting missions that can easily help us score a lot of points was also important. And, if the mission is easy and quick to accompl

Our Robot Design

Our robots, Opportunity and Curiosity, are relatively agile and boxy. Each robot uses two drive motors in the front and two caster ball wheels in the back. They both have 4 motorized attachment points which are controlled by two motors.  We have 3 sensors on them, 2 color sensors and a gyroscope. Our Boxy Design: We built both of our robots to be boxy so that we could easily bump against the wall to align the robot and to keep the wires inside the robot where it won't interfere with our missions. Sometimes (especially when the robot is carrying heavy attachments) our robot will constantly go at an angle despite the corrections in our program. When this happens we use our boxy outer panel to back up against the wall to make sure that we are going straight again. Before we had this design we also had another problem with our wires getting in the way of our missions. This boxy design helps ensure that these wires stay inside the robot. 1 motor=3 motor attachment places Wh