Today was our last challenge with the robots. Our robot’s goal was to kick a ball, then go find it using Bluetooth. We spend the first 15 minutes of class mastering the Bluetooth and polishing up our robot overall. We were able to get the Bluetooth controls down pretty well before we had to test our robot. We did ok with the whole challenge. Both times our robot was able to find the ball and the second time we did the challenge, the robot was able to kick the ball and go after it again.
We did not use any software or programming during this challenge. This is because the Bluetooth was able to handle all of the controls itself. The Bluetooth came in handy throughout the whole design process because we knew that we could always use that if we couldn’t figure out another solution. Bluetooth ended up being the easiest for us to work with so we decided to use that. Chris’s smart phone allowed us to download an app that could control our robot. It controlled each motor separately and allowed us to kick and move when we liked.
The only problem with the Bluetooth is that it was hard to control exactly where you wanted the robot to go. We had trouble with the tilt program which is the one that we had to use since that was the only free app available to Chris. We practiced many times trying to master it and in the end we realized that we should of practiced more. It took us too long to reach the ball compared to other teams. If we had to do this challenge over again, we would of taken more time to practice and then hopefully do better than the other teams.
Below is our team relfection that was written by all of the team members. The purpose of this reflection is to look back on how our team performed and how our team dynamics worked together:
Overall, team swag wag worked out very well. Initially, we split up work with 1 person mainly handling the blog, 1 person focusing on programming, and the other 2 focusing on the design and building of the robots. This structure worked out well and the entire team worked cohesively to end up performing well on each of the competitions including a win on the dashed line following robot. We all got along and understood our roles in the team, resulting in a lot of fun and learning.
The only real issue our group had was clarification of the guidelines for each project. It seems like we would have pulled ahead and won the tug o’ war competition if we knew you could add things outside of the box to the robot to weigh it down or if outside materials were disallowed as specified in the directions. It also feels as though a lot of unique ideas that people had for certain projects would get stolen and become the norm amongst every other group even though they initially had other ideas. It was frustrating to come up with a good idea for a robot and then have every other group steal that idea. Granted the competitions were not super serious or competitive, but it goes to show that it’s a cut throat world and people are quick to jump on good ideas even if they aren’t their own.
All this being said, we learned a lot about creating a functional group and about working with robotics/LEGOs throughout the last few weeks. We definitely realized that the little things are important in large projects because if one thing was off in a program like the color grade on the line follow project, there is a good chance all the work will become trivial and the robot won’t work.
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