The robot has four large wheels attached to or at least in the same plane as the sides of the RCX and is therefore able to flip. With the wheels, it is about 6.5 inches long, and without the wheels it is 5 inches long.
Our robot’s program does the following: The robot begins at point A and rotates slowly until it sees a light (at point B.) Then it heads straight for that light. It keeps going until that light turns off, then does a flip and begins rotating again (upside down.) When a light turns on at point A the robot moves toward it, and when the light turns off it stops. The robot is now upside down at point A. It waits until the object is placed in it, and then begins rotating again. When it detects a light at point B, it goes to it and stops when the light turns off. It then waits until the object is removed and starts rotating again. When it sees a light at point A it moves toward it for about two seconds, then does a flip and rotates until it sees the light at point A again. It then goes to point A and stops when the light turns off. It is (or should be) back where it started, right side up at point A. This program is controlled almost completely by humans with flashlights, and it is pretty hard to get it exactly right, but we are getting better at it and we think we can do it pretty well now.
The program could easily be run many times over in a row without trouble, as long as the humans get it right. Doing this would be even easier if we were to make multiple objects that could be placed in the robot. We are also thinking of adding a platform or box shape to the top (bottom) of the object(s). (It is placed in the robot upside down, and I am talking about the part that is on top when it is in there) This way it will be able to carry other objects with it as well, maybe a different object each time we run the program. As long as they are not too large or heavy, we could use any objects we wanted.
NOTES ON PROGRAMMING:
Despite the fact that we used a power of 6 for the turns, they do go very slowly because of the
friction the front wheels have against the floor. In the program, at every “wait until” stack
controller, there is a yellow command. Those are just notes that tell what source the sensor is
getting it’s input from, point A or point B. I suppose you could have easily figured that out,
but it is very annoying when one opens one of those just to find it empty, and it moves itself,
very slowly, all the way to the bottom of the program because it is too close to the other commands.
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