Today was a data collection kind of day. We have spent so much time troubleshooting and running multiple trials I realized that we have no evidence to show what the robots are doing other than video, (which is difficult to publish in a paper). Since I could not draw on the floor with markers I needed a different plan. So, I raided the hole punch
reservoir and decided to trace the path of the following robot using a
"bread crumb" strategy. By dropping little white hole punches
behind the robot as it moved, you can see below what I accomplished.
The left picture shows where the two
robots started and each picture involves a complete circle by the lead
robot. The lead robot faithfully followed the box in a counterclockwise
direction while the follow robot received the Bluetooth information. The
middle picture showed some promise: the follow robot managed a decently
straight line at first, turned left as we would hope and continued straight
until turning left again. Great! Then that third left didn't go so
well. The third picture shows the randomness that we are accustomed
to. Yes, the lead robot made its circle and the follow robot did whatever
Each of the trials shown in
all of the pictures from today were done back to back without any changes to
the robots settings or the programs uploaded to lead or follow bot. When
moving between rooms I did recalibrate the light sensor in hopes the line
follow lead robot would produce and send reliable information.
Here is what else we have...
Upper left: this is where both
robots began in each of the trials here. Again, the lead robot was
reliable when following the black line. The robots were stopped when the
follow robot deviated so far from the path it ran into a desk or under a
chair. The upper right picture almost looks like we had somewhat of a correlation
to the movement between the two robots. Since it was not reproducible,
the science of science says it might has well have not happened... so don't get
too excited.
And the last part of the fun for the
day, just because I hadn't documented enough unpredictability and randomness to
crush the ego of my efforts and my spirit to keep trying...
The red dot represents the starting
point of the lead robot and the yellow dot the starting point for the follow
robot. The robots were allowed to continue in their paths until the
follow robot ran into the wall (first and third picture) or ran into the lead
robot (middle).
This is not failure; it is just a
1000 step experiment, right?!!
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