Assignment 1: Going the Distance
Goals:
- Become familiar with LEGO parts and construction
- Learn how to build a robust robot base
- Become familiar with ROBOLAB and LEGO MINDSTORMS Education programming
environments
- Program a robot to drive straight and make 90 degree turns
- Determine tradeoffs in using ROBOLAB vs. LME
programming environments
Tasks
- Build a taskbot
- Calibrate the robot's speed. Create a graph that shows how far your
robot travels forward (in in. or cm.) when programmmed for a given
amount of time. You should gather data points for 2 different power
levels and at least 4 different time periods in the range 0-5 seconds.
- Program the robot to drive in a 11 inch square as precisely as possible
Possible ideas to improve your robot
- Attach a pen to your robot so it can trace the square
- Make your robot repeatedly draw the square bby adding looping behavior
- If a button is pressed, the robot will alternate between going
clockwise or counterclockwise
- If a button is pressed, the robot will trace a polygon with an
increasing number of sides (i.e. triangle → square → pentagon
→ hexagon...)
Writeup
All writeups should include:
- Individual names and logins
- Group name
- Resources used (human, text, online, or otherwise)
- Time spent on project
- High-level description of your robot and its program
- How did you split up the task?
- Known problems with your solution (e.g. the robot will not work on
carpet, it breaks if you make it go farther than 5 feet, etc.)
This writeup should also include:
- How did you develop an algorithm for turning 90 degrees?
- Your critique of the given robot design. What are the benefits? What
are some of the drawbacks?
- Discuss how you might augment a robot or the environment to better
solve the problem.
Group evaluation
Along with submitting your work, you should comment on how your group
worked together. Explain and evaluate your contribution to the project.
For each other group member, you should give them a numeric score from 0-4.
- Never showed up
- Showed up but probably should not have (i.e. detracted from group's work)
- Made minor contribution
- Solid contributor
- A star!
Please give a brief justification for your evaluation.
Submitting your writeup
All writeups should be in plain text, HTML, PDF, or Microsoft Word format. You can submit your
writeup using Blackboard under Assignments. You should submit
- One writeup per group
- One group evaluation per student
Jeffrey R.N. Forbes
Last modified: Tue Sep 5 23:17:11 EDT 2006