Subject:
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Easter Egg Hunt
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:43:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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2363 times
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As we mentioned at the meeting (and in the last message) our next meeting will
be at Crossroads Shopping Center on March 26. This is the Saturday before Easter
Sunday. So our mini-challenge will be to build a robot that will hunt for
chocolate Easter Eggs.
There will be an elevated 4-foot by 8-foot table with a black surface. Two-inch
high walls will surround the arena. In each of the four corners will be a round
hole. In the center of the arena will be a few rectangular buildings. Scattered
around the arena will be a number of chocolate Easter Eggs. These are the
'standard' foil wrapped chocolate Easter Eggs, about an inch long, and just
under 3/4 of an inch wide. I'll post a picture sometime after Valentine's Day
since no store is carrying them yet.
The job of each robot is to search for an Easter Egg, and when it discovers one,
bring it to, and drop it into one of the holes at the corners of the arena. Only
look for and deliver ONE egg at a time. There will be lots of children watching,
and looking forward to getting these eggs. But we don't want one child getting a
dozen eggs, while another waits for fifteen minutes until an egg gets delivered.
To have robots not pretend this is a sumo competition, the rule is that when you
are delivering an Easter Egg, you need to move around the arena in a
counter-clockwise fashion. Every time you hit a wall, turn to the left. You
should get to a corner pretty soon.
If you wish, when you find an egg, you can just roll it into the corner. Either
with a wedge-like shape, or with some sort of hoop that you lower to keep it
captive. But mechanisms that pick up the eggs are very welcome!
Since there are rectangular buildings around the arena, and a good place to
'hide' eggs is right beside a building, try to have your robot be able to find
and gather eggs in this location.
Your robot might bump into another robot on the arena. If your robot is in
search mode, then it doesn't matter, it can just back up and move away. But if
it's delivering an egg, there are two strategies that it can take: first, just
go ahead and do a strict left-turn every time it hits an obstacle. Eventually it
will get to a corner, after all. But a second alternative might be to see if the
'wall' moves away, and if so, just pause a moment before continuing.
Here's a picture of the arena:
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Samples/Arenas/easteregghunt.gif
Some building and programming hints:
Make sure that your robot doesn't have anything dragging or scratching on the
ground. Only wheels should touch the ground. (This includes your egg-grabbing
mechanism.) Also make sure that your robot doesn't have lots of spiny
protrusions that other robots might get snagged on. If you are creative, make
your robot look interesting.
When you get to a wall and turn left, try to have your robot hug the wall. That
way you'll actually be able to deliver your egg. (If you don't hug the wall, you
will likely start drifting away from it, and that will mean that you miss the
hole!)
Don't forget there are going to be a few buildings in the arena, as well as
other robots.
I hope to see a lot of Easter Egg Hunting robots!
By the way, if there are one or two people that would rather build a stand-alone
Easter Egg-dispensing robot, that could work too. Make it something interesting
to look at. But we'd prefer to have as many egg hunting robots as possible.
--
David Schilling
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Easter Egg Hunt
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| As promised, here are the specs on the Easter eggs that we'll be using for our Easter Egg Hunt robots. We'll be buying a bunch of Hershey's Solid Milk Chocolate Eggs. The eggs are about 1 1/8 inch long, and just a bit over 3/4 inch wide, or in (...) (19 years ago, 16-Feb-05, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
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