Here is something neat I've been working on since January that I finally have finished:
It is a Boe-Bot robotics kit from Parallax Inc, a company that makes robot parts and such. I had a course this semester which required me to design and code software for this robot, which I also had to build using a pile of parts. Aside from the wheels on the sides and the chassis, I selected three "QTI" infrared sensors to take readings off the ground at the front of the robot, and a sonar on a rotating servo at the front which gathers distance readings of objects in its proximity. The robot was designed to be self-aware, so it ran the course based on rules and algorithms which I designed. Once I flipped it on, it ran completely by itself to the end of the obstacle course! I spent a few months testing out various hardware, including such things as light sensors and whiskers. The software was written in PBASIC, a custom version of BASIC that Parallax ships with its BASIC Stamp embedded microprocessor.
So now to get away from the technical words, the robot had just one requirement: start at point A and end up at point B. The real problem was what the robot had to do in between to get there. Starting off, it had to go inside a cardboard box (cave), seek the exit and find the road (black tape on a white table), follow it until it found the a curving pylon course (paper cups) that it had to navigate through, and finally solve a maze (cardboard bricks) to the exit!
Here is a video of my robot solving the course from start to finish in just two minutes!
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