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L E G OMinestorms

E C U 1 7 8 P R O J E C T L E G O R O B O T C H A L L E N G E ( L R C ) M I L I N D A P R A S A N D E S I L V A

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My teammates and I are firstly required to design, develop RobotChallenge program (either sumo or line following) using Lego Mindstorms, we chose to do line following robot, as we thought it will require a more challenging programing then the sumo robot and therefore help us develop deeper skills and understandings. My teammates and I were given 4 weeks to design and programme the line following robot, and we were given a set of equipment, which includes Lego Mindstorms elements, a storage box, a USB cable, etc.

Lego RobotChallenge (LRC) project aim is to enable me to understand the basic concepts of computer science in the areas of computer architecture, networking and programming fundamentals through a robot project.

LEGO MINDSTORM

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First Sprint(First And Second Week)

The First week consist of getting to know the team members and getting to know their strengths and weaknesses, from there on we

were assigned jobs based on these, while also making sure we hand a hands-on experience with the other job functions as well. For me, I was

put in charge of building and designing the Lego robot and also thinking of helpful features and parts that will help our line follower to

work to its correct function, and then some. I also was researching about the useful programming methods on the application “LEGO

MINDSTORMS EV3 Home Edition” and also phone connectivity.I made a stable robot using a modification of a general build and ran a

pre programmed functions to check whether the motors move in sync, and also that the robot can turn.

The Second Week consist of more programming based work and also developing the build of the Lego robot. The first build of the robot was

weak in is structure as it bent upwards due to its weight, so I built the robot with wheels instead of tank tracks helping us build the robot

closer to the main computing brick, keeping a lower centre of gravity and reducing the weight of the build.

The programming of the line follower was initially programmed to follow the reflected light intensity of the black line on the track but we

ran into a problem of that the robot couldn’t recognise the turning points of the track WEEK ONE WORK DEADLINE

100%

WEEK TWO WORK DEADLINE

90%

PROGRESS OVERALL OF PROJECT

45%

H AV E W E M E T

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Second Sprint(Third And Fourth Week)

WEEK THREE WORK DEADLINE

85%

WEEK FOUR WORK DEADLINE

100%

PROGRESS OVERALL OF PROJECT

100%

HAVE WE MET

The Third week consist of programming, creating a stable working code for our Mindstorm to follow our first track, from

week two onwards our programing was working inconsistently and we were trying alternative code to ensure that the program

was consistent, We decided to change the colour sensor to detected colour instead of reflected light intensity, we also

made the decision to expense the smoothness of the line follower robot in order to simplify its movements so that it

could turn when it meets a junction or corner of out track, the simplified algorithm makes the robot travel one direction by

default and the opposite direction if the sensor detects the black line, causing the robot to follow the black line by

continuously moving from white to black and vice versa. This new algorithm is less smooth and slower along a straight line

but much better at turning corners. In hope that we can implement features of our robot to do different action when

they move onto a different colour circle on our track. I was assigned to make the function of when the line follower robot

hits the green circle, that it would wave and play a greeting.

The Fourth week consist of final stages of programming and testing out the line follower robot on our final track, the team

and I implemented all of our separate program into the final line follower program and uploaded it onto the brick of the

robot, we ran some few initial tests and debugged some errors. Eventually the line follower robot followed our track and done

it function features smoothly.