Week #8 -- Now we're making progress!!

This stuff is hard! Just when you get the programming and the robot right for one task, then the next one needs physical changes to work. The butterfly effect teaches that one small change affects so many others in unintended (and some times unrelated) ways. We learned this the hard way. But we did it!

The first program the boys at Redstone Robotics Incorporated encountered was how to drive the robot down a narrow lane, make a turn at the right moment, and then move over a gate. The robot, and particularly the ball bearing in the back, kept on getting stuck. We solved this the brute force way: by driving FASTER!!!

Then we needed to move the robot around a Lego "turd" and to a curved line, which it would then follow for a specific time or arc-degrees and then stop. The trick here was to curve it slightly left around the turd, then slightly right to redirect it in the right direction. Then it needed to detect, but ignore the first black line and turn slightly right toward the second black line. When it reached the second black line, it would rotate left around 90 degrees, then follow the outside edge for a particular number of seconds. Trial and error taught us the time.

Last week, we found out how to program the medium motor, which moved the lift arm up and down. We used this to drive to the crippled pig and drag it back to base. Not a very gentle way to treat a robot animal missing its hind legs, but we were on a time deadline!

The final task was to string all of our completed tasks together in a competition setting. With introduction, commentary, and celebration, it took 1:40 and two intermediate programming steps.

Tasks completed: (1) shark/tank in box -- 30 points (2) pig in base -- 9 points (3) gate down by blind man -- 15 points (4) milk ONLY dispensed from machine -- 20 points