09-03-11 Testing multiple BT connections

Emir and Jakob started testing if they could get multiple BT connections to communicate.

We constructed four simulations:

1. Warehouse input
2. Delivery car 1
3. Delivery car 2
4. Delivery car 3

We would simulate the cars driving to the warehouse input and delivering one ball each.

We designed our simulation as follows:

1. We start up by connecting the warehouse to all three cars.
2. To simulate that the car is in right position to deliver, we press the Enter button.
3. The car send a message to the warehouse that it can start knocking off its cargo.
4. The warehouse receives the message from the car. The warehouse knocks off the cargo and sends a message back, that the car can drive away (this is shown by making a wheel turn).

 Here is a video of the system working:

- Emir and Jakob

23-02-11 Test of Gate Version2.2

After finishing the physical design and the program design we constructed a test of concept. We made 10 tests with a success rate of 40%. Here is a video of a successful test:

In order to improve the test environment, we constructed a test track of the T-cross. Here is the track:

And here we have the test setup:

We had a program from previous work with line following, and made a car with a program to follow the line. We started the program at the gate and then started the program on the car. We made 50 tests with a success rate of 15%. Here is a video of a successful test:

We thought of what the problem could be. When we took raw data from the sonic sensor it gave unstable signals from the front of the car. We tried to isolate the sonic sensor. We constructed a test with a flat surface acting as a car. We made 15 tests with a success rate of 100%. We are sure that the lack of good sonic response from the front of the car is coursing the bad test results with the car. Here is a video of a successful test with a flat surface:

 Next steps:

• Try testing with different designs of cars and programs.
• Try to make an alternative way to detect the car coming from the factory
• Make a traffic light for the M1 track
• Make a circular track for continues testing

- Emir and Jakob

23-02-11 Gate version 2.2

Emir and Jakob tried to make a new design of the Gate. Both gate- and software wise.

 After considering how to make the design better, we tried to cut off some weight. We added a red light so it would glow red when the gate was opened. We came up with this design:

Jakob have some experience with “State machines” and “thread programming”. Therefore we decided to make the gate control in one thread and sensor input in another tread.

The sensor input will be a “command thread”, and the other will be a “Gate control thread”.

The sensor can man make two commands:

• The gate should be open
• The gate should be close

We made the gate a “State machine”. The two states are:

• Gate is closed
• Gate is open

The program overview looks like this:

The idea of the design is:

“The gate is normally closed and the light is off. When a car (from the factory) comes in the distance of 10 cm the gate will open, and the light will turn on. When the car is more than 20 cm away from the gate, the gate will close.”

- Jakob

23-02-11 Second test

Our gate was too heavy that’s why we change it totally with cardboard box. We also put a wheel on the bottom of the gate so it can easier open the gate. We tested and it works much better now.

Here is video of our gate:

- Emir

22-02-11 First implementation

Emir and I started to implement the gate design. We build the gate due to the design in previous posts. We build the gate so it was stable and was looking like the sketch. The model looks like this:

We used the onboard programming facilities of the intelligent brick and tried to make the gate move. It worked. We when made a simple program to see how the sensor and gate reacted. The program looked like this:

Observations:

  

• We must open the gate slowly to avoid aggressive behavior.
• The gate might be too heavy.
• The brick does not have enough mass to stay in the same place when the gate moves.
• The sensor has good response.
• When the intelligent brick is being fixed to the same point the gate responds quite well.

- Jakob