These videos are from the Fall 2010 ECE 565 Autonomous Robotics Competition. Team 3 (Nick Searcy, Paul Faget and myself) designed “Blackbeard”. The goal of the competition was to collect as many total balls as possible and bring them to your robot’s starting side within the time limit. Points were only awarded for balls over the number which originally started on a given side. Each team was given a common set of components, essentially a modified Lego Mindstorms robotics kit plus some additional sensors designed for the class. Also the robots were all controlled by the Motorola HC11 based Handyboard running the Handyboard’s own special Interactive C variant of ANSI C.
Blackbeard was unique for a number of reasons. First, he had two functional sonars (which required hacking the Handyboard and writing an expanded ultrasonic range sensor library for the HC11). Second, he was programmed using a “round robin” time division multitasking approach which allowed four separate behaviors to run concurrently (a timer/side checker, meta-sensing, obstacle avoiding and wall-following). Third, he included meta-sensing behaviors which allowed him to sense when he was stuck or in danger of being caught in a loop and then attempt to break out of it. In addition to his unique software features, Blackbeard also had a robust mechanical design which was tested for a balance of speed and torque as well as an overall construction which focused on the task (collecting balls) while at the same time eliminated loose wires or weak sections which could break off or become tangled in an opposing robot.
The result: Blackbeard was the highest scoring robot in the competition and made it to the championship game only to lose due to a technicality in the rules which has now been eliminated (because of this competition).
Some of Blackbeard’s design features can be seen in all of these excellent pictures by Paul Faget.
A flowchart version of Blackbeard control code is linked here: Control Code Flowchart
Spicer Robot Boy 