Basics.

• Team:

  Group Project

• Role:

  Lead Programmer

• Dates:

  January 2016 - April 2016

• Location:

  Santa Clara University

• Technologies Used:

  Java, C

The Project

The goal of the project is to design a mouse-sized robot to solve a maze pictured below.

I implemented code for the robot to explore the entire maze (even the dead ends) and save the grids in a “mental” map. The robot then uses the mental map runs Dijkstra’s Algorithm for the it to solve the maze in an efficient manner on its second run.

I implemented the PID controller for the robot by using the data it is receiving from IR sensors mounted to the front and sides. This ensures that the robot moves in a straight line.

The final product consists of an Arduino board and a custom printed board that the electrical team printed. This was the team’s first ever MicroMouse competition and we lacked experienced compared to other teams from University of Hawaii where MicroMouse was an actual semester course. The maze mapping and solving worked well when it was ran in a simulation with a digital maze; however, it did not work well with the actual robot due to the inaccuracies of the parts and terrible tractions with the wheels.

Although our team did not win a price and there are definitely somethings we can improve on, this competition was a fun experience learning how to prototype and testing.