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Phase 3

A number of competitors at the RI/SME Student Robotic Engineering Challenge 2001, for the Journey Robot contest. Phase 3 includes the addition of 2 InfraRed proximity sensors, and a C program to advance along a white maze with black border lines. Now christened "Me Robot", mine is in the lower left.

Entering the robotic competition was a last minute decision, and I didn't get to work on it as much as I would have liked to. I did OK in my run, but racked up plenty of penalties. I started with 2 penalties for being over length, and received more for skipping the hill section. While the Bedlam has enough power to get over the hill, I didn't have any way to detect when it got to the hill area to increase motor power.

The program is straightforward. After initializing the PWM and A/D sections of the PIC 16F877, it lets the user select running speed via a potentiometer on AD0 then waits for the user to press a button on RB0 to begin the run. When the left or right down-pointing IR detector senses a black line, the robot stops, backs up, and pivots a little. It then resumes forward motion.

Written in C. Click here to see the source code.

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