User:Kylekmcd8/enes100/robot car

Write problem/project Goal
After getting into groups we decided that our first project would be to create an autanomous robot car. And we decided that for the first weekend we would divide up the work and research different areas of the project, and get some ideas of what how we are going to start building it, for the presentation next week.

My First Task
I am going to research the history of the robot car and how it works so that we can understand what is invloved in making one. I started with looking at older groups projects but found that no one has really a completed robot car project.

Summary of actual work over first weekend
I researched what the DARPA Grand Challenge was and then provided the research for the presentation. I also found that it is necesary to provide more work on the user page than was earlier explain.

Week1 Narrative
Over the weekend I edited our team page by posting a picture of the robot car that we will most likely be working with. I retrieved the robot from the dusty location it was previously resting in, and I found the instruction manual on how to program and build it, just in case reassembly is required.

My Second Task
Bring in the NXT robot car and equipment into class on monday.

Summary of actual work over second weekend
The mindstorm NXT robot car was not working like i had hoped, probabably because it had been sitting usused for a number of years. The double A batteries in the control box were corroded, and the mindstorm downloadable software was not working on the school computer. Both of these problems were easy fixes, but others arose afterwards. I changed the batteries and cleaned the inside of the control box. After that the control box was able to turn on however the display screen showed nothing which is not normal. After that i tried downloading the NXT Mindstorm software onto my laptop which would be easy taking it to class to work on, but the same problem that happened at school, the software could not download on my laptop. Later i tried downloading it on a home computer that had Windows xp which did seem to work for the most part, so i came to the conclusion that the software was not compatible with Windows 7.

Week2 Narrative
Because the NXT robot car was inoperable, the team decided to ditch the original design and use an RC powered with an arduino to navigate autanomously.

It would just be easier instaed of trying to fix the Mindsortm NXT robot car. Plus we are a little behind. We plan to get most of the work done this week

My Third task
The next task is to work as a group to make it easier to make the RC car compatible with an arduino. We plan to do this by separating the chasy from the Hummer exterior. Once this is accomplished we plan to find a way to power an arduino and get to the curcuit board of the RC car so that is will be able to move without a remote.

Summary of actual work over third weekend
After separating the hummer exterior from the chasey, we discovered where the wires of the antanae, motors of the wheels, and headlights are attatched to. In the center of chasey, there is a rectangular box that has four screws, which at first was where we thought we would attach the arduino to the car.

Week3 Narrative
After presenting the work that our team had accomplished over the course of the week so far, a classmate and our profesor suggested the idea of intead of try to take apart the RC car, take apart the RC car remote control because it will be easier to program an arduino to control the analog controls of the remote than the curcuits of the car itself. Therefore during class we decided to switch gears and focus more on the remote. We removed the top half of the remote but could nkt get it completely off until we took off the caps of the joy-sticks. Inside the remote conrol is the breadboard that has all of the resistors, capaitors, and wires that connect the onn/off switch and analog controls to the antanae which sends the sinal to the RC car. After class we got together as a team and discussed what our plan were for the weekend and how we were going to divide up the work. Afterwards we tried to understand more how the Rc car remote works because te breadboard covers some of the wires that will need access to. I drew a picture of what the remote control looks like without the front half on it. We still have challenges that we need to oversome, seeing how programming arduinos is not one of our strong points.



My Fourth task
Over the weekend we divided up the work so that one of us would create a prototype obstacle course for the RC car to travel through by itself, one of us would work with the actual arduino, and the other would research how to program the arduino to control the remote control. Because once we are able to control the remote control, we will attach it to the RC car and it will be able to move on its own.

Summary of actual work over fourth weekend
It is the last week that we get to work on our project, and it has been alot of hard work. it seemed like we were always behind. What this tells me is that we set our goals to high and we were not ready to complete all of these tasks. We were able to start programing, but we didnt finish. We figured out how to use the remote control to autonomously move the robot car even thouh it wasnt very successful, and i feel content with what we have accomplished and the work that will be shown on our team page.

Week4 Narrative
Eventhough the project isnt as complete as i would have liked, i still had fun with this project and i have alot of work to do with the team page because that is the last portion of this project that is graded. I reformated it so that the poster section was no longer there, and i moved the pictures that were in the poster section to the story. I also added several paragraphs into the story that explain our process throughout the 4 weeks. I was having difficulties with the pictures becasue for some reason the story section was compressed into one line on my computer, but i got some assistance from my group.

Complete Team Page
Fill out the Team Form (should have already copied the form, created the team page, linked to it and started filling it out).