Thesis design project: Proof of Concept 2
Our thesis design project this year is to make an autonomous robot (out of Lego Mindstorms) that will go into a maze and rescue black coloured eggs. This is a year long project and the class is split into teams of 5-6 people (my group has 5).
The robot will be given a text file of the map, before it enters the maze. Once in the maze the goal is simple: Rescue all the victims as fast as possible. The standard Lego Mindstorms software does not apply here. To handle the complex logic and additional constrains we decided to use LeJOS (open source Java OS for the Lego RCX brick).
Tomorrow is the second “proof of concept” and I just spent a good 6 hours today getting our robot to work. All the robot has to do for tomorrow, is go into the maze (in a straight line) detect the egg and rescue it. Seems simple enough… no. First of all, the egg is hallow and thus extremely light. Unless the egg is going to be tied down (by tape or Palestine) the touch sensor will push the egg without even detecting it. I hear using a light sensor would work better; I’ll try that in the future (or a combination!). The next issue is handling all the threads of execution that get spawned from all the listeners that are set.
Ah well, it works now, and is good for tomorrow. This project is going to take lots of work. Eventually the robot will have to make turns, clear blockages, work with a map (and without), save multiple eggs, etc. Good times.
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