We chose to take on museum challenge. Our goal is to get our robot to follow the white line around the black museum. We are setting the cricket up with a light sensor in the front and are hooking up a display to see the light readings. This light sensor will produce lower readings for light colors, such as the white of the track, and higher readings for darker colors, such as the black of the museum floor.
THE PLAN VERSION 1.0
In the Logo Blocks program, Nikhil and Ryan are telling the robot to:
-Move with both motors when the reading from the light sensor is <175, which includes the value of the white line.
-When the reading is over 175, the robot will turn on the motors in opposite directions, making it spin, until it senses a value less than 175 again. When it senses a value less than 175, it means it is on the white track, and thus it starts going forward again, by turning its wheels in the same -direction, until it senses a value over 175.\\ -We put these commands on loop so that it will continue the robot completes its journey around the track. This idea failed, because when the robot turned around in a circle, it sensed the white line behind it and thus started moving along the track in the wrong direction. Also, the robot was turning too fast, so it couldn't really digest the sensor inputs.
THE PLAN VERSION 2.0
-Because the above plan did not work, we are telling the robot to make slow, small turns that make the sensor sweep the area in front of it in pursuit of the white line. Instead of telling the robot to turn on both motors in opposite directions until it finds the white line, which makes the robot spin, we're telling the robot to alternate between turning on motors A and B for two seconds at a time, which creates that desired sweeping motion. \\
-When the reading from the light sensor is >175, which accounts for the black background, the robot starts alternating between turning left and right, so the robot's sensor gets a chance to sense the white line, and when it receives a value under 175, which indicated that it is on the white track, it will start moving forward until it gets a reading of over 175 again, at which point the robot will start the sweeping motion again to find the white track.
-We programmed a loop in Logo Blocks to make this process repeat until the robot makes it to the end of the track.
This revised plan also did not work, because the robot kept running over the track instead of following it because we only had one sensor in the front and not one in the back [this is explained in more detail in the "Results Obtained and Analysis Performed" section of our lab]. We did not have enough time to change the program and test the robot, but we have a good understanding of what went wrong and what we could've/should've done.
