Final Project ¶

Table of Contents

Final Project

Proposal (2017 - Week 01)¶

My objective for the final project is to make an educational mobile robot based on modules for a step by step learning experience. Like the plan of Seymour Papert, the idea is here to experiment, not only use the robot via a computer, but also to create the robot :

Source: www.youtube.com/embed/nNzeGittVXw

For this purpose, my idea was to divide the robot in three parts, to provide a good UX for each of those stages. Meaning that you can play with your robot since the beginning :

mechanic : laser cutted part to assemble, with mechanical winding as module for instance (to replace servos at the beginning)

electronics : based, for example, on the Braitenberg vehicles

computing : using scratch programming with a Raspberry Pi

Mechanical part¶

Structure could be a derivate based on SumoBots but at the end the following requirements need to be achieved :

The outer perimeter should not exceed 700mm (R=100mm), 900mm deployed (R=140mm)
The height should not exceed 350mm (+25mm for an emergency button)
2x 100 x 70 mm for flat marketing shield
(Fixed beacon on the top)

Electronic part¶

For the electronic step an idea will be to use Braitenberg approach :

A Braitenberg vehicle is an agent that can autonomously move around based on its sensor inputs. It has primitive sensors that measure some stimulus at a point, and wheels (each driven by its own motor) that function as actuators or effectors. In the simplest configuration, a sensor is directly connected to an effector, so that a sensed signal immediately produces a movement of the wheel.

Depending on how sensors and wheels are connected, the vehicle exhibits different behaviors (which can be goal-oriented). This means that, depending on the sensor-motor wiring, it appears to strive to achieve certain situations and to avoid others, changing course when the situation changes.