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Electronics, Programming and Robotics for Students

San Diego Tech Fest, February 2009

An Event to Showcase Projects for Students in Electronics Degree Programs

From February 21 to February 28, 2009 the school will be holding a Tech-Fest to give electronics students an opportunity to display and compete with their electronic creations. Here is the basic information on the robots to be presented and the competition events. For contest rules, Click Here.

Line Following Robots

There will be two classes for this event. Since the Board of Education Robot (BOE-Bot) uses servos for propulsion, they cannot be expected to compete with robots with DC motors, so the line following and line maze contests will be subdivided into servo and motor propulsion. Contestants are:

Motor Propulsion:

3PI Robot - C Programming Class: Matthew, Jesse and Gerald. This team took first place in the line following and line maze competitions. (Here is a photo of their 3PI robot)

And left to right, here are Gerald, Jesse and Matthew applying the finishing touches to the new line maze they constructed:

And here is a C programmer writing code for the 3PI robot:
3PI Robot - Microprocessors Class: Andres
Basic Stamp 2 - Embedded Systems Class: Louis Barboza(Here is Louis posing for a photo-op)
...and his vehicle before he tears it down for major modifications:
Lego Mindstorm - Control Systems Class: Lauro, Gerald, Kirk

And here is a video of the line following winner:

Servo Propulsion:

BOE-Bot - Embedded Systems Class: Jorge
...Jorge at work on his BOE-Bot:
BOE-Bot - Microprocessors Class: Jed, Noel, Rodney, Derick. This team beat out number two in the BOE-Bot line maze competition by five seconds to take first place. They also placed second in the line following contest.
BOE-Bot - Control Systems Class: Rafael, Edward, James, Colin
BOE-Bot - Control Systems Class: Ernesto, Ryan, Mark. Being only five seconds behind the first place team earned this team a second place in the line maze contest.
BOE-Bot - Control Systems Class: Alejandro, Marlon, Jackson

Line Maze Robots

OMG!!! It Works!!

All contestants in the line maze category above are automatically entered in the line-maze contest.

The largest number of robots will be required to and able to perform two functions, follow a line and traverse a maze.

Line following courses and line mazes will use standard 3/4 inch electrical tape as the line. There will be three possible courses. The exact course before the contest will be unknown, but several examples are shown here:

Simple Line Following Course

This course will offer winding turns that will be fairly easy to navigate. Most robots with even one or two sensors can successfully complete this course. The challenge will be to complete the course faster than other competitors.

Here are two students using a paper plate to lay the race course tape in a smooth arc.

...and here they are admiring their completed creation:

And here is a video of one of the teams competing in the line following contest:

Complex Line Following Course

The complex line-following course will possibly contain greater that 90 degree turns, or perhaps even an intersection or two. The challenge for this course is to force the robot to figure out the algorithm and/or sensor combination that will detect more complex turns and intersections.

Line Maze Course

This is an existing line maze set up for practice. For the contest, this maze will be modified to prevent robots from having prior knowledge of the exact course.

Here is a shot of one of the 3PI robot teams making the first test run on the newly completed line maze course.

The course has no "loops". This means that there are no paths that let the robot get stuck going around repeatedly in the same place. A robot using the left-hand rule or the right-hand rule will always be able to find the end of the maze.

This type of maze offers different levels of complexity that mostly depend on better programming for more complex behavior. For example, here are several possible levels and the associated behavior:

The easiest level just has the robot completing the maze from start to end with no other requirement other than a reasonable time limit.
The next level of complexity would be to award the prize to the robot that completes the maze in one pass in the festest time. This tests the programmers ability to travel quickly and to make time efficient turns and manuevers.
A contest with the goal to award the prize to the robot "that can complete the maze in two passes" gives the programmer an opportunity to use the first pass to determine the dead-end paths found on the first path and to avoid them on the second pass. This adds the programming task to somehow "remember" or store the path and/or the turns during the first pass.
The most difficult for the programmer is the contest that awards the win to the robot that completes the course in the fastest time in three passes. This can be solved in several ways, but often uses this logic:
- Use the first pass to discover all dead-end paths and generate a corrected path that takes no bad turns.
- Use the second pass to measure the time it takes to get from each intersection to the next. This allows the robot, on the third pass, to speed up considerably on the straightaways, and perhaps, make turns smoother and more efficiently.
- And of course, the third pass would be over a known course, making the best time possible for each leg of the course.

And here is a video of the winning 3PIrobot run where the maze is completed in just 13 seconds!

And the runner up who solved the maze in 18 seconds:

To give students a test track for the line maze and to have a portable track to carry around, Mr. Vannoy used a 2 X 4 foot piece of plywood to create this test track. (For scale, all intersections are spaced at 6 inches.)

Other Robots:

Climbing Robots

* T E A C H E R ' S A W A R D *

Teresa and Chris will use grasping hands to make a climbing robot. Here are Teresa and Chris and a shot of Chris working on the gripper mechanism.

This climing bot won the Teacher's Award for the most unusual, innovative robotic project in the entire Tech Fest.

Here is the YouTube video:

Robert decided to build a robot that can climb stairs, and it worked very well. Here is a photo of Robert and his bot followed by a video of his robot climbing a step:

Balancing Robot (or Inverted pendulum)

Picture yourself standing a five foot broomstick up in the middle of the room. Now put two wheels on the bottom. Then add a microcontroller that senses when the broomstick is starting to fall. That powers the motors to move the base of the structure "under" the broomstick keeping it vertical.

Jaybea, Michael and Mark will team up to make this happen. Here's Jaybea and Michael:

And who is this guy guarding the team???

Radio Frequency Seeking

Can you give someone a small radio beacon and have a robot follow you around the school? ...Without running into people and obstacles??

Ask Chris Anderson and Steven how they are planning to do this. Here is a shot of their workstation where they are testinf a Ping))) acoustic sensor, one of the several they will install.

And here is Chris during the Ping))) sensor testing:

Bi-Ped Walker:

* Best Associate's Program Award *

Last, but certainly not least is Guilherme's bi-ped walker. This robot was awarded the prize for the best electronic project by an Associate's Degree student. It started out being able to crouch, stand and take a crude step or two. By the final day it became a true walker.

Here is Guilherme working on his code: