The new world

Dear Friends,

It has been a while since our last update though we have been working non-stop ever since. We were able to deliver the dumb robot on the 26th of December. Although it's almost smarter than us. The professor presented us with a pretty 14,5 out of 20. Yay!!

Right now we are working on the next stage, a smart robot. We did some big changes in our "world", we bought some nice blue paper and covered our board with it. Instead of that awful black tape we were using we also bought Yellow paper to set the slots. It´s looking really nice, I guess...

We made a video to share our work and our weekend. This might be the best Christmas present this year :D

See you soon!

How to find enemies

After we built the rotating base we moved on to the mechanism that will support the RGB sensor to search for the enemies. We chose the RGB sensor because, as we were told, it is the most reliable sensor. Therefore our first attempt to find the enemies will be with it. We could use the touch sensor, but there are three different types enemies and it would make it hard to know which one it would be touching. We decided to do a stretchable structure so it does not occupy too much space and makes it easier to handle.

This is our first try and it looks like it can handle the job! We will do further tests so we are able to figure out whether the RGB sensor is the most suited.

Rebuilding

Hello once again,

It´s been a while since the last time, but we bring some good news! It has been going really well (for now).

Last post we had decided to dismantle our little friend. So we did, twice. It looks like it is strong enough to handle all the weight of the robot and the sensors. Since the cables were too small for our first solution we decided to move everything instead of just moving the crane. The cables will not be a problem anymore!

 This was our first attempt. We thought it would be better that the sector which rotates touched the floor, because it will give some support to the rotation base and support all the weight. In this one we put the rotating motor in the middle but was getting a bit loose. The connection between the base and the rotating base was not strong enough.

 So we dismantled it once again to build our latest version. It still touches the floor for the stability. But we changed the motor to the wheel. The wheel rotates better and stronger. It made it, also, possible to build a more sustainable connection with the base. With all the robot up on the rotation base we do not need to worry about the cables (for now).

Let's see where this solution takes us and hope this is the one! With the motor at the wheel the rotation base gains too much power for its current base. So we have to find a way to fix the base to the ground.

Dismantling

Last Saturday we encountered our first problem. The cables of the sensors are too small for our solution. So, we'll have to dismantle our robot and start from scratch. (Shame on us)


Good bye dear friend! :)

Testing Rotation

Last Thuesday, we tested for the first time the motor that gives rotation to the crane. It works quite well. Now we just have to build the crane and start coding.

Check out our first test:

First Steps

Hello,

Last week we took our first steps on the project. We began to decide whether the robot should move or not. Firstly, we thought it should move but after some thinking we decided it should stay still. It would be easier since we would not have to calibrate the motor wheels and we could use those sensor to move the crane. Yes, we're having a nice, big crane.

So we began to build the base of the robot. It is hexagonal, because our enemies are coming from six different positions. The motor which will make the crane rotate is at the center of the hexagon.

This is the support of the crane. We are hoping this base supports all the crane's weight.

Group 9

Hello,

We are a group of students, from the University of Madeira on Madeira Island, Portugal. Our names are Mariana Barros, Diogo Cró, John Douglas, Zé Camacho and José Alberto Silva and we are on the third year of Computer Engineering. 

Our purpose with this blog is to share our work, success and failures, while making our Artificial intelligence Project.

Want to know more about our project? click here!

Diogo Cró.