Find the Line Challenge Assignment #7

12/10/10
The goal of this challenge was to navigate through pipes and find a strip of black tape using a touch sensor, ultrasonic sensor, and a light sensor.
          I'm planning on having the ultrasonic sensor sense the pipes and the walls because if I can sense the objects while I'm far away then I don't have to worry about backing up to get to an area where I can keep searching for the black tape. I'll use the light sensor to find the tape, and then when it finds the tape I'll just have the robot stop and then I'll win! The touch sensor I'll use if i get close to the pipe and I'm next to the pipe. Like if my ultrasonic sensor can't sense it but I still might bump into it.
           My robot bumped around and used it's touch sensor to back up and turn when it bumped into the pipe or wall. My robot used used ultrasonic sensor to sense when it was approaching an obstacle and it used the light sensor to find the black.
           The only problems were the little black peggy things that stick out the sides of my touch sensor. They would grab the pipes sometimes when they would back up. It was a pain in the butt. Also my robot would get stuck against the bins (aka the wall) in a way so that it wouldn't touch anything but it also couldn't ultrasonically sense what it was doing. Speaking of ultrasonic.... such a poop head. It took me a greater chunk of the class period to situate it on top of my robot so that it could sense the pipe. It was looking too high and it wouldn't sense anything, but then it was looking too low, and it was sensing every frikin thing! I got it eventually, but Greg helped me. Too heads are better than one, right? Mr. Hillier didn't say team work wasn't allowed.
          I was successful in the end. Two class periods of work for a lousy twenty seconds of actually running my successful program. I tried having my ultrasonic sensor low, like three inches above the ground, but it was more successful to have the ultrasonic sensor on the top of the robot. I tried having long black peg things sticking out the side of my touch sensor vs. having shorter pegs. When I ran my program and it was successful I had the short pegs... not sure what conclusion I come to about this; but whatever works works, ya?


          In the end I had an ultrasonic sensor and a touch sensor running in a loop. When the light sensor sensed the black strip then everything was over! The ultrasonic sensor would back up and turn to the left when it came within a certain distance (i've forgotten the actually distance) of something. My touch sensor would stop, back up, and turn to the right when it was pressed.
I used the ultrasonic sensor, touch sensor, and light sensor. Why? Well, goodness. Haven't I explained it enough?