Week 5 Day 1 - July 8

This morning we spent a little bit of time on a conference call with Dr. Namuduri discussing the robotics team's  progress.  As a summary, our NXT program to have the robot follow the black line is successful.  The conversion to a more simple concept and program proved to be the better choice for our purposes.  We are still working with the Bluetooth programming and communication of messages between the two robots.

To improve the lead robot's performance we thickened the line on the floor it follows.  The line follow program is only good as long as the sensor is able to take readings and react to those readings in a timely manner.  A thinner black line was the source of our troubles: see video below, hopefully my explanation makes sense.

It seems that the robots are communicating well, he have evidence they are sending and receiving messages, but the quality and consistency of the message is questionable.  For instance, the lead robot will follow the black line and "lose sight" of the line randomly. 

Variations on the motors is a problem.  This causes the robots to move at different speeds, and more importantly causes the turning radius of the two to be different.  On a fairly consistent basis our following robot will turn more tightly than the lead robot.  Rumor has it among some of the RET teachers that this type of inconsistency in motors like this is inevitable. 

We shall see...

Perhaps our strategy is all wrong?  Instead of a left-turn-right-turn kind of program it is time to focus our efforts toward utilizing the ultrasonic sensor as the following robot's main guidance.  Still lots of questions and "what ifs" if this is the case.