Thursday, December 11, 2008

Tractor Pull

It was an investigation that the robot is pushing the weight as heavy as poosible for more than 50 cm within a minute. So, rather than the speed, the power which the robot is pulling the weight was more important. In the previous investigation (drag race), biggest gear was connected to the driving gear in order to enlarge the speed, however, contrastly, this time we connected biggest gear to the driven gear. so that the power of the robot would be much stronger although the speed of the robot would be decreased.
During the class time, we used 4 gears to increase the power, but ironically, we found that it wasn't so effective. moreover, it was worse than the robot which used only 2 gears.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Chapter 14 classic project

This chapter is about exploring the room using some sensors and techniques. To begin with, year ratio is the eay one to make robot differently. Just by changing the size of the gear, the speed changes. Next one is bumper. This is reltated to the touch sensor. whenever the bumper that connected to touch senser crashed onto an object, it react certain behavior that you ordered before. not only that, other obstacle detection is shown. light sensor! it is mostly used to stop in certain area or to follow the lines. This chapter was very likely a obstacle course challenge summary. it provides most of ideas that is used in obstacle course challenge.

Drag Race Challenge

It was a challenge that whose robot is going to finish 3 m race at first. This investigation, i think, is sat up to use gears.

During the class time, I could see many groups were using huge gear(driving gear) to get much faster spped with smallest gear(driven gear). So, we used 4 gears. 2 was biggest gear and 2 was smallest gear. but it was not up to the expectation. The robot didn't even move 1 cmon the ground!!! but, in the air, the wheels rotateed vigorously. we were shocked. It was weird. From the long discussion, we made a conclusion that motor doesn't have much power to rotate 2 huge gear. It was unexpected result. So, we used 2 medium size gear and 2 smallest gear. This time the robot moved, but it doesn't move as fast as when we used only 2 gear, smallest one and biggest one. Finally, we knew that the best decision is using 2 gears, huge and smallest one. overall, we used biggest gear and smalles gear.

I guess the winner of the race is who has the a robot with good start. (responding time)

Buidling the Course Robot

This is how our robot looks like

It is simple, and ordinary, but it works well...ha ha

Johnny and I spend our first class time only on planning and making our robot.

As some other groups do, we tried to re-make the robot at the beginning. to be more cool and to look fiarly good one.

but we realized soon that we don't have time to managed it, so, unfortunately, our robot stay as a simple and normal one. but our wires are really complicated than any other group! I guarantee

That's how we made our robot!!


Obstacle Course Results/conclusion

This is the one of the investigation that I tried my best to complete succesfully. We made our robot three times from the original one. That's the reason that we could finished it as a first group. Although our robot doesn't seem extraordinary, i am quite satisfied on our result.

We wasn't on the right track from the beginning of the class, we failed to stop in the white square line. This is where I felt very annoyed. till the very end of the class, we could not make robot to stop on the white square and it made me feel more annoyed......

On our second trial, fortunately, the robot stoped stopped in the white quare line. i thought we've gone through all the difficulties of obstacle course challenge, because at that time, our robot didn't stop in the white square line, but it works well on the other courses like turning right after bumping and so on... however, the more difficult task was waiting for us... which was that the robot curves itself to the left side, although we didn't programm the robot in that way.

We stucked on the problem, but soon, we find the solution. it was quite easy when i think about it now. just programe the robot to curve to the right side while it moves forward. With our best effort, we could have opportunity to get a first place, although we couldn't get a full points. Anyway, i think i really enjoyed this investigation than any others!!

I think the problem that we faced is because our robot's weight was leaned to one side.. and maybe friction was the problem, too.

Gear and Speed (investigation summary)

This investigation is very much related to the ch.2 Gears. It's because the speed of the robot was propotional to the teeth of the Gears. As most of you guys know, the more the teeth, the faster speed the robot have.

Firstly you should set the robot to for forward for 3 seconds.Then you measured the distance that robot travelled. This process is repeated three times for the accurate value. divide average value of the robot travelled by time in order to get the instantaneous speed of the robot. This process will be runned for all conditions, which is used to make hypotheses. then you might predict the value and compare to the actual value. in my case, we've got 49.3cm/s, and our hypothesis was 50.3cm/s.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Get in gear investigation

1. what happens if you made your driving gear bigger and driven gear smaller?

If the driving gear is bigger and driven gear is smaller, the robot's speed would be increased. When the driving gear rotates in certain time, the driven gear also rotates. however the driven gear will rotates more due to the size of the gears which is related to the number of teeth.

2. What would hapen if you made your driven gear bigger and your driving gear smaller?

In opposite, when the driven gear is bigger and the driving gear is smaller, the robot's speed would be decreased due to number of teeth's difference. Therefore, the driven gear will rotates less while the driving gear rotates in certain time.

chapter 2 playing with gears

Role of gears is to move robot between the motors and the wheels. However it doesn’t work only itself, it works with the whole robot. So, it may seem not important but it plays very important role in operating and moving robot.
The gears have two types, which are driven gear and driving gear. Driving gears are connected with motors, and driven gears are connected to the wheels. When the motors are operated, the gears are also rotated and they rotated wheels. Simply the role of gears is connecting motors and gears. When we think role of gears, the role of them are just connecting motors and gears, however it also affects other elements in robot such as speed.
Speed can be increased and decreased by the teeth of the gears. When the teeth of the driving gear are more, the speed of the robot can be increased. In opposite, when the teeth of the driving gear are less, the speed of the robot can be decreased. For instance, if the driving gear has 8 teeth, and other gear has 24 teeth, the speed of the robot will be increased 3 times faster. It’s because the time taken when 24 teeth gear rotates is equals to the 8 teeth gear to rotate 3 times. On the other hand, if the driven gears’ teeth are less, then the speed of the robot is increased.
There are other types of gears. Firstly there is work gear block. It looks like a stick and connected by gears. However, it doesn’t turned by the other gears. The other gear is clutch gear. It helps on strength of the gears.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Chapter 1 Understanding LEGO® Geometry

Before we learn LEGO, it's very important to have basic geometric properties of the LEGO bricks such as brick's different shapes and sizes. LEGO brick's size and shapes are based on the their measurement, which expressed with three different numbers, width, length, and height. This represented in coordinates form. In LEGO robotics, there is a brick that called TECHNIC brick, which has measurement of 1 x N (any number) and this brick can be connected by its hole which are inside of them, and this is called LEGO beam. We use Pythagorean theorem to figure out the number of hole that are required. Pythagorean theorem is A²+B²=C² where C is hypotenuse. For example, if a right-angled triangle has 6 holes as its opposite and 8 holes as its adjust, then we can use a beam which has 10 holes as a diagonal beam, it's because 6²+8² equals to 10². Although the the shape of liftarms differ in their shape, it also connect many LEGO part.

Field of View Experiment

The aim of this experiment was to figure out how far ultrasonic sensor can detect.

Materials: ruler, maker, can, tape, ultrasonic sensor, and the robot


Procedure

1. Materials are checked before the experiment was run.

2. Tape is attached in the middle of the white board and marked every 10 cm

3. The robot is place at the very end of the tape


4. The can was placed randomly near the robot in order to figure out the area that the robot can detect the can.

5. The place where the can was detected is marked with tape.

6. This process was repeated to figure out the area that robot detect

7. Marked point is measure in coordinates


8. Distance was recorded in paper.

Obstacle Course Chanllenge

we should use all four sensors that we covered during the class, which are sound sensor, touch sensor, ultrasonic sensor and light sensor.
1. Begins with claping which will makes robot moves forward.
2. The robot stops in the box by using light sensor.
3. The robot moves forward and bumps to the wall. and change its direction to the right by using touch sensor and moves forward.
4. By using ultrasonic sensor the robot will detect the wall and change its direction to the right and moves forward again.
5. last but not least, the robot pass through the final line without touching the can.