Eric's Obstacle Course Robot (Trial Run), George School 2007

One of my students, Eric Engelhardt, has programmed his Mouse robot to navigate an obstacle course. This robot is not autonomous (yet), but used "dead reckoning" to navigate the course. (That is, the robot is not capable of making its own intelligent decisions.) The goal: navigate from one end of the board to the other (ending up in the semi-circle), avoiding the glass beakers and trying to hit the red cups.

Here's how to keep score: +1 point for each second the robot is moving; +5 points for each glass beaker hit, --10 points for each read cup hit, +50 for going off the edge. Try to get the lowest score. Eric hit a beaker and missed a cup. His score: 33.10.

Robodyssey Systems manufactures the Mouse robot and RAMB II motherboard you see here. The robot's brain is NetMedia's BX-24 microcontroller, which is programmed using the BasicX language. I am the author of the world's only BasicX textbook; if you are interested in learning how to program your own robot, see my website at www.basicxandrobotics.com.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• robot
• obstacle
• course
• computer
• programming
• dead
• reckoning
• BX-24
• BasicX
• George
• School
• student
• Robodyssey
• Mouse
• maze
• race