MIKE ROCHE | PAUL KIM | DORON GALILI | TIM HUGHES

OBJECTIVE: Complete "The Challenge"

Teams competing in "The Challenge" are to design a robot to complete the course under all rules and regulations. The competetors will each have three minutes to pop as many black balloons as possible, while avoiding all white balloons on the course. The team with the most points at the end of the competition will be the winner and the lossing teams will be required to clean-up the Mechatronics Lab!

RULES:

The following rules were set so the other teams didn't cheat!

• Three minute time limit per team
• Black balloons worth +10 points
• White balloons worth -5 points
• The "Money Balloon" worth 25 points
• Random starting location

THE CODE: Ball Buster

The Ball Buster Source Code was written in C, within Code Composer Studio. The source code made use of a huge switch statement, whereby our team was able to successfully control the actions of the robot from a Visual Basic Interface. The switch statement included the followig cases:

Case 1: Wall Buster Mode

Wall Buster Mode was used by Team Disco to generally navigate the robot around the course. In this mode the robot would right-wall follow until otherwise instructed. This was accomplished by taking readings from stratigically place infrared sensors (IR) on the front and right side of the robot. One advantage of this mode was that the robot would completely ignore all balloons.

Case 2: Ball Buster Mode

Ball Buster Mode was used by Team Disco to seek out only Black Balloons and destroy them. In this mode the robot would use the camera to capture a greyscale image of the course in its view. The code would set a threshold, whereby the robot would center itself upon very dark objects and drive towards them. Once the robot was within 0.6 tiles of the balloons, the "Death Hammer" would come down and destroy the balloon.

Cases 3, 4, 5, 7, & 8: Manual Drive Modes

Manual Drive Modes were used to further control the robot, in the event that the robot was in a jam or it needed to get to a specific part of the course as fast as possible. These manual modes included Pause, Right & Left Turns, and Forward & Reverse. Because the majority of the programming was flashed into the robot memory, there was very little information that was sent through transmittion.

Case 6: Bonus Mode!!

Bonus Mode was used by Team Disco to detroy the "Money Balloon." A balloon was suspended approximately three feet in the air. When the robot was directly under the balloon the robot was paused and put into Bonus Mode. After a 2.5 second delay, the robot would fire the "Death Ball" up into the air and destroy the "Money Balloon!!"

Balloon Buster Visual Basic Interface

ACTION SHOTS & MOVIES:

Team Disco: Ball Buster Robot Perspective View

Team Disco: Ball Buster Robot Side View

Team Disco: Aerial Buster Cannon

DOWNLOAD THE VIDEOS: Balloon Buster 1 | Balloon Buster 2 | Balloon Buster 3 | Aerial Buster 1

ADDITIONAL FILES:

Ball Buster Source Code | Ball Buster VB Interface

Mike & Doron Lab 9 Source Code | Tim & Paul Lab 9 Course Crasher Code

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