Designing a Robot that Could Complete a Maze on Its Own

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Introduction
The purpose of this experiment was to design a robot that could complete a maze on its own. A blueprint of the maze to be completed was given to the team and the physical maze on which the robot would be tested was available for experimental trials. Within the maze there is white duct tape placed on the floor, with black duct tape placed on each side of it. This tape runs from the entrance of the maze to the exit as shown by the red line in Figure 1. Within the maze there are also bonus blocks, indicated by the blue blocks in Figure 1. The team will be granted three trials, during which the goal is to complete the maze as quickly as possible and earn as many of the bonus point as possible.

Figure 1
Materials and Methods
For the construction of the robot, only the Lego pieces and sensors provided in the tackle box were used. The design of the robot was modified from the original versions however, with the following specifications. The wheels were positioned in the front part of the robot, thus changing the axis of rotation to the front of the robot when it turned. Instead of the conventional four wheel design, the two rear wheels were replaced with a single pivoting wheel, thus reducing the resistance when turning. Finally, an ultrasonic sensor and sound sensor were mounted at the front of the robot as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2
The team decided unanimously to take the software approach to the project, and use LabView to write a program which would allow the robot to complete the maze. Before any program was written however, the team spend time evaluating different suggestions on how to approach the problem. Each of these solutions presented benefits and drawbacks, and these were each assessed before decidin...

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...is project was not completed in its entirety as a whole, but rather broken down into components of problem solving. The team first evaluated the goal of the project, and spent time discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each of the designs suggested. After the team had agreed on which approach to take came the task of modifying the robot to meet the needs of the proposed design. The most time consuming part of the project was programming the software and testing it as new coding as added to each of the programs, evaluating which of the ideas worked and which did not. After the first time that the robot completed the maze it was tested repeatedly to ensure that the program would work as expect in each of the trial runs. Thus throughout the course of this project the team implemented the common steps needed when solving problems – evaluating, designing, and testing.

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