Control systems - The improvements

All of the groups which were taking part in this task decided to go forward with the ShooterBot. They would all build and program the ShooterBot. Because of this we realised that we had competition and we wanted to make ours unique. We decided to improve the mobility so it could find targets quicker and do its job quicker. As the movement of the robot was a little slow we decided to replace the movement system. It was a track that the robot run on to move about. As it was not as fast as it could be we replaced it with rubber wheels. There was a huge boost in mobility.

As time was an issue the programming for the robot wasn't as good as it could be. It was a quick and simple design we used to make sure that the robot was 100% working otherwise we would of had to keep going back and making changes. An issue that I personally found frustrating was that the loop system would keep on going. For example the robot would detect an object which would travel past and ShooterBot would shoot at it, but would carry on shooting until the loop had finished. With some fine tuning of the programming we could have prevented this.

A improvement that could be made in the future is that the ShooterBot could move towards the objects once it's detected, but at the same time stay a certain distance away from it so that it didn't crash. This would have to include some sort of detection of any object around it to stop it from crashing at all. This way the robot could keep targeting the object until it's completly gone. 

Control systems - ShooterBot NXT-G Program

In order to program our robot we had to use the NXT-G program software which was the software I mentioned in another post. It came alongside the Lego Mindstorms kit. The thing is with robots, building the robot is the easy part but actually programming the robot to do what you want it to do is another thing. You have to use the software below to program it in order to follow instructions. If the robot switch is pressed which is the pressure sensor then the robot will start the process. The process starts with searching for any objects in the range of 20cm. It will use ultrasonic sensors to do this. When an object has been detected by the robot it will shoot the balls until the target has gone. It will then loop the instructions shown in the software image.

Below is the software used to program the control system. Its a screen capture of it being developed.

Robotics/Control systems - Evidence

My evidence of creating the control system.

The design for the Robotics/Control system

For this post I will be talking about the design and implemenation.

Most of the groups who were taking part in creating a control system chose to build the ShooterBot. We were given instructions which came alongside the Lego Mindstorms kit. The robot is designed to shoot small plastic balls from its 'shooter' at different targets depending on what the program/software has instructed it to do.

Once we had built the ShooterBot we could choose from a selection of sensors. We could of chosen from many sensors such as light, pressure and ultransonic. After talking about it as a group we decided to go forward with ultrasonice and pressure sensors as we had to make it use two sensors. The sensors were important to us for the tasks we wanted the ShooterBot to do.

We had tested different settings to see what worked in various situations. For example we wanted to know how far the Robot could shoot the coloured balls. We wanted to know how accurate it was. These were key to finding out the capabilites of our control system. The sensors might not have worked past certain measurements so we decided on 20centimetres. The pressure sensor was programmed by us so that when it begins to be pressed it will search for targets within 20cm. It will then loop and begin again.

Introduction to Control systems - Lego Mindstorm

Hello, welcome to my blog which I will be creating several posts about my experience off the task I have been given. The task is to come up with my own control system and build it. I will be able to do this by using Lego's Mindstorm programmable robotics kit. The kit includes and supports various sensors such as touch, light and pressure sensors. This is for Unit 14 in the BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in IT.

As well as using the programmable robotics kit we have been given some software to program the control system within a graphical user interface. This task has to show the robot (control system) using two sensors by using the software available to us. Throughout the posts I will provide evidence.