bluetooth

T1he blue tooth was the hardest part of this investigation. i finally got it working this morning with some help from Tyler because he already completed this part. the main thing that i was not doing write was putting a display block in the receiving program. Now it works it took awhile but its done.

intoduction to robotics

Today is our final day in robotics class.
This was a pretty long term hard work and everything.
The thing that I learned and is one of the most important things I thing is robot contraction. Every peace on that robot is important no matter how small it is. The reasoning for this is that you need to have a stable robot that way you are able to make all of the turns correct and move in a straight line this is why robot design is important.

Programming the NXT was pretty easy after you got the hang of it, it did take a bit of time to learn all the tricks when writing a program. The hardest program that we had to Wright was with the Bluetooth it took some time to get it rite. The main things that you needed to know was how to do was get the motors moving duh, after that came turns swing turns and point turns.
Later on in the class it came down to using the sensors we had the sound sensor first then the light sensor then the touch sensor then the ultrasonic sensor. The main way that we used the sound sensor first was clapping this was to get the robot to move. Later on we worked on getting thresholds for this. Then there was the touch sensor it was pretty straight forwarded when it was pressed you could have the robot stop, backup or whatever you wanted it to do. Next there was the light sensors we first learned how to take thresholds with this sensor, and then we started programming them we could have them stop if there was a black line or follow the line. Then there was the best one of the entire ultrasonic sensor this sensor was able to detect things from how ever far away it was then you were able to program what you wanted the robot to do next.

The way that I have learned the use of math and science and technology while using robotics. Is that I learned that you have to use math a lot like when writing formals calculating gear ratios and everything. The main use of science is the class was physics like how come the robot will move and how far. The technology part was mainly programming and the use of sensors and motors.
The ways that I’ve need to communicate in this course was when I needed help or when it came time to help out a fellow class mate on there robot what they needed to do and everything. The collaboration between every one in this class was very important because at time we did need to share ideas on design you could almost tell that there was a little bit in everyone’s robot that came from someone else’s.

lamp challange

I finished this task today. I had to add a flashing light to by robot. to do this I had to plug it into one of the other motor ports. The next thing I had to do is add a program block for this to get the light working. The next thing i had to do was program a my block to do this, it wasn't to hard because I've been shownen how to use my blocks before and I read the chapter in the book so this helped me out big time today. The whole point of this was for the light to start flashing after a door was open.

e stop

This was a very straight forward task. There wasn't to much thinking that had to go into this project because me and Tyler already did this some of this in a previous activity. The only thing I really had to do was add a program beam up top with is used for multitasking. The way that you program the emergency stop is you add the extra program bream up top and add a wait for touch block then a stop block this is how you do an e-stop.

contemplate

I've just completed this part of the investigation today.
This investigation wasn't to bad it was nice and short. More effort went into the programing though. I was pretty worried about the light sensor because i was having problems with it before, but now its fine. The sensors that i had to use in this investigation was the ultrasonic sensor, light sensor, and the touch sensor. When a door was detected the alarm would go off when the touch sensor was pressed the it would say stop.

Chapter 26 My block

For the chapter that I choose to read was chapter 26, it was about the block.
MY block I’m sure most of you guys out there are wonders what a MY Block is. Well a block is a block that can be programmed to do whatever you want it to do.
The way that you use a my block is you select it in the software of course then you select the function that you want it to do like moving the motors turning right or whatever. Using my blocks help with programs that are going to be pretty long and movements that are going to be done more than once this saves you a lot of time, even makes your program look better.
A key thing to remember is to save each my block because if you don’t your whole program well get messed up.

Contruction of the guarddog

I choose the guard dog robot because it looked kinda cool.
building this robot was not as hard as the task bot with the task bot more time had to be out in on building it. This robot is a lot smaller so all the peaces fit in pretty good. A really good thing about this robot is that it is really stable witch is a lot better than the task bot because that robot was not as stable as this one. The main problem is the light sensor the way that its positioned.

Day 4

Today I was finally able to have my robot run the course, a couple of days late but it ran the course.
One of the main reasons I was not able to run the course well was the way that my robot was built,it was not stable enough. I noticed this big time because everytime I tried to fix one problem another one developed. I tried changing small things which helped a bit but not enough, every time something had to be changed the program would have to be change to, it would the course well sometimes but not all of the time.The way I had it first was geared for speed but I changed this hoping to get more stability so it would run the course better but this didn't help that much. I think if it would have been more of the task bot design it would have worked a little better.

But today I decided to run it the problems I had was making the first turn because my wheel got stuck, then second problem i had was my robot being on course I had to tap it a couple of time to fix this.

day 3

so far my robot runs most of the course well. Today I have to work with the ultrasonic sensor because last class It was not picking up the desk at all. I plan on working on the last part of the challenge today. I also had to change the wheels and gears on the robot because the robot was unstable and not taking the turns well. I'm now facing the problem with my robot inching to the left I need to fix this so I can run the course well next class.

Program

I've pretty much wrote my hole program already, but I am having so small problems getting the robot to take off by the end of this class and next prep I plan to have everything completed and I plan to try and run the course earlier.

obstacle coure challange

This is going to be our last challenge every class we are going to write a blog about how we are going to complete this challenge.
The sensor that we are going to have to use in this challenge are as follows
1. Sound sensor
2. Ultrasonic sensor
3. Touch sensor.
The way we are going to start is by having the Robot start from behind the line clap to get it started (sound sensor) then its going to stop in a box for 6 seconds(light sensor), take off bump into the wall then it's going to back up and turn right (touch sensor)then it going to stop before it gets to the next wall/desk (ultrasonic sensor) turn right and go forward stop for the obstacle that gets in the way move around it and head to the finish line

chapter 4 reading sensors

Our homework was to read chapter 4 and yes it was a long one.
In this chapter we go into a little more detail about some of the sensors then in the last blog.
First we talk about the NXT the is was another NXT first before the one that we are using now
The difference from the old one and the new one is that the old one had 3 port instead of 4, the wiring was different to the connectors were bigger.
Then we talk about the touch sensor when we did some of the other challenges this sensor might have help out a bit but we didn’t know much about so we were not able to use it unfortunately. The was that the touch sensor works is the same way that it’s called touch sensor , when you right your program you can program the touch to stop when it is press or tell it to go in another direction whatever you want it to do. The 3 states of this sensor are pressed released and bumped. There are ways to program it for races when it detects another robot it can be pressed and it will speed up if you are in a bumper car race. The main problem that you can face with this robot is work in a room with a lot of obstacles the robot will start to do things you don’t want it to do. With this sensor you don’t have to calculate a threshold
Next we talk about the light sensor the way the light sensor works is that it detects different types of light for example if the sensor see’s white and black you can program the robot to move a certain motor so then the robot will go left right and so on. But before you can do anything you might want to calculate the threshold. When you have the light sensor on the back of the robot and the robot going backwards you will notice that your line tracking will be more accurate.
Then we have the ultrasonic sensor I liked this sensor the best I think it would have work really will during the circuit race. The way that this sensor works is that it can decent how far an object is and it can do the right action rather it’s stop or get back on course.
We also talked about having multiple sensors connected to the same port (multiplexing). It like using a splitter in away.

Chapter 9 and 10: Feedback and Wait for it!

Our homework of the long weekend was to read and blog about chapter 9 and 10.
The two previous classes we were working with the sound sensors, recording the vales that came up on the NXT from the sound sensor, of the different beeps that we heard. After we completed the tasks we had to graph our results in a Google doc the Google docs aren’t bad the only thing is that the internet is so slow here it slows us down sometimes when using them.
Chapter 9 was about configuring sensors, some of the sensors that were talked about were the NXT touch, RIS Touch, NXT sound, NXT light, RIS light.
The first sensors are going to detect the change in a condition. The types of conditions very it can change form light sound and more. Second sensors blocks are only able to do one condition at a time
The sound sensor is a sensor that detects sound, the light sensor is a sensor that detects light, the ultrasonic sensor can detect how far something is, and the rotation sensor is the number of rotation that is in the program.
The next chapter we talked about the wait block how to program it and all. There is also the time wait block the wait blocks are one of the most important things in the program that you will use, I also learned this the hard way when we did the last challenge I forgot to use a wait block and it messed my robot up when trying to run the program it didn’t do what I wanted one wheal would go then the other they both had to go at the same time though. You are going to use this blocks for the values of the robot its distance and everything.

chapter 6

Chapter 6 was pretty much about building strategies. How to build with the extra support so that the robot will be more stable in when the robot is performing tasks? Building a robot is like building a car, in a car you need a support structure or the car will just fall a part same with a robot. When first built my robot the first time at the beginning of the term I had this same problem I though it was a good idea to put some extension axles were the wheels went and then they both started to bend when I had to put the NXT on the robot because of how much the NXT weighed, also during the last challenges I had to change the location of the NXT and how a placed it. Another thing to think of when building the robot is to separate the left and right drive assemblies you can not just use one axel for the wheels because when you only want one motor to run both wheels are still going to move but one want them to run on there own. Stud less beams are great for support to. The NXT needed to be to be centered so that the robot won't lift up on either side.

Tracktor Pull

The tractor pull was pretty much like the drag rack in a way so I didn't have to spend as much time preparing as i did for the drag race also I didn't have as much time to prepare for this challenge, but I managed to get it done working on it until 11 the night before the the challenge. Again I went without the gear train the reasons for this was I was spending to much time on it and also started to run out of the gears that i want to use on the robot. So I went with the same design as last time with some changes I took the wheel off the front of the robot, but kept that 3rd motor on 1 it gave the robot more horsepower and also made it look big and bad. On my first trail I pulled 4000 grams then for the 2nd trail I pulled 6000 grams I would have went for 7 or 8 for barging right but I didn't have the space. overall I think I learned a lot in this challenge I must say this was one of my favorite challenges so far. The gears that I used were a 16 tooth gear on the motor and a 40 tooth gear on the wheels. The gear ratio that I used as stated before with the gears I used. The ratio was 16/40=2/5.

drag race blog

The other day we had our drag race, this was the challenge that I have been looking forwarded to since the start of the class.But the other had preparing for this challenge was not a walk in the park preparing for this task was very stressful, manly because i spent most of my weekend preparing for it. I started by trying to build a gear train but that was to much work and it was not working, so in the long run I went without the gear train, but geared my robot for speed I used a 40tooth gear on the motor and a 8 tooth gear on the wheel. I decided to use a 3rd motor on my robot so that I could have some more horsepower on in. I Did make some other small changes to my robot that was mainly adding beams and longer axles
On challenge day everything was ready to go when we did our runs to make it far we all put sound sensors on our robot so they would take off at the same time. We also used a speaker that was in the class room and played some metallica for the start. The robots were to fast to get an accurate time with did kinda suck so it turned out that I came in second. The gear ratio that I used as stated before with the gears I used. The ratio was 40/8=5.

google doc

http://spreadsheets.google.com/a/iskl.edu.my/ccc?key=pD-IgeS0SdGFwiUB_ImOFTA

chapter 2 blog

Chapter 2 pretty much starts by giving us the layout of gears. What are they? Well we all know what gears are.
The next thing we talk about in this chapter is teeth counting to the number of teeth on the gears. Also if you have to different gear it does matter if you were you but the gears like if you but the bigger gear on the motor and the smaller gear on the wheel axle the robot will move faster but on the other hand if you but put it on the opposite way the robot will move slower, the reason that the robot will move faster it the gears are installed the first way is because it’s able to turn the wheel more times.
We also talked about gear train and gear ratios. Gear train gives you a lot of power, mainly because you trade the same velocity as you do torque. Gear ratios are important because everything needs to fit in right you can’t have any gear slippage because then you can mess you’re gears up and the Axel or anything else up on the robot.
There was also the clutch gear which is used to help prevent damage on the robot when it started to exceed the limits. The clutch gear also automatically disengages the motor of the toque become to high.

chapter 2 blog

circuit race

Today we had our circuit race witch was pretty sweet.
In order to complete this task we had to use the techniques that we learned in the previous tasks that we have completed in class, the previous tasks that we had were wheels and distance and measured turns.
Getting ready for this challenge was fun and tricky at the same time. The hard part was getting the turns and making sure the robot didn’t run into any of the obstacles that were in the classroom that were in the way sometimes like the work benches that we couldn’t move.
I used move blocks to complete this challenge the reasons that I used the move blocks was because they are easier to program when using move blocks you only to use one block for both motors if you wish, and when you only need one motor to run you select that motor.
Another thing that I noticed and was a problem was on the day of the race, I think the floor was dirtier then on Friday because my robot had more friction and the front wheel was dragging when making the turns. The reason that I used the wheels that I used was because I also wanted to go for speed at the same time.

moving and making turns

The 2 previous labs that I did in class were called Right face and measured turns.
Right face was teaching us how to make our robots turn mainly. The next lab we did was called measured turn it was about making precise turns and we had to attach a pen to the end of the robot to draw a circle.
chapter 4 was talking about the difference between motor blocks and move blocks.
What is the difference between motor blocks and move blocks?
the difference is that motor blocks only move one motor one the robot, and the move block moves one motor only.
When would one type of block be more advantageous than the other
You are better using the motor blocks sometimes because when you want to have point turn in your program it makes it easier to do.

Hello World, My Name Is

Our home work over the weekend was to read chapter 3. In Chapter 3 you learn about using the display block in the programming software that we using when programming our robots. When using in the display block you will use the configuration panel for many functions like what is going to be projected on the LCD and how long you want it to be displayed. There is also a drawing tool that can be used the drawing tool can be use to draw anything from circles to lines which can also be place on the LCD screen on the NXT. The data hub was talked about to the data hub lets you draw data wires from one block to another it can carry numbers or text, makes life easier to.

What is a Robot? What is a Program?

The questions we had to blog about in chapters 1 and 2 were how is a robot different from a toaster? And why is program structure important? A robot is different from a toaster because the robot and preform basic human tasks if programed to and a toaster can't. The reason that program structure is important is so that it makes our life easier by getting everything correct the first time because if we do not use program structure the robot will not function in the correct way or at all.

full speed ahead

In this lab we did our first test on our task bot. The object of this test was to get the robot to move forward 720*. We passed this test

Chapter 1 Understanding Lego Geometry

Chapter one is kinda boring but kinda interesting i think. It's pretty much about Lego geometry and also Lego history. The Lego line started in the 70's. In this chapter we also learn about the different types of Lego's that they are like the old bricks and and the stud less beams. We also learn about the size of the Lego's dimension and everything.
The advantages of using TECHNIC construction is that its easier to use and its also stronger than the traditional bricks witch also gives it more stability so you don't have to worry about it capsizing.

What defines a robot?

A robot is an object that can be programmed to take commands to do what we program it to do; it can perform human activities and functions when programmed to. Like touch sensors can be programmed to turn is a different direction when they are pressed against something (wall or object). Sound sensors are what we used in class on Thursday to get a basic idea how the robot moves, they are sensors that tell the gears to move the wheals on the robot to move when it hears sound, the more sound that there is the faster the wheals will turn witch means the faster the robot will go.

Kenny Jones©