Computer Science 014
LEGO Robot Engineering
Williams College
Winter 2007
Lecture 9: Robotics Exposition
Date: January 25, 2007
Today's lecture location:
TCL 202
Agenda
Announcements
For students in the WSP class: papers due tomorrow by e-mail
Introduction to Robotics
Robots today are designed to do something, to go somewhere, or both
They can do things that humans find boring or dangerous
They can go places humans can't go
Examples:
Robots need to be constructed then programmed
A program is the set of instructions we give to a robot (or to any computer, for that matter) that tell it what to do and when
The same robot can be "taught" to do different tasks by giving it different programs
Introduction to the Handy Board and LEGO components
Very little processing power by today's standards
We can control the Handy Board by connecting it to a regular computer
The Handy Board has a lot of places where we can plug in devices
Devices we are using:
Motors: can turn motors on and off, forward and reverse, run at different speeds
Touch sensors: are we touching something?
Light sensors: how bright is it?
Sonar: how far away are objects in the robot's environment?
Servo motors: motors that move to a specific orientation
Basic "HandyBug" components and behaviors
Some of these devices are used to build a "HandyBug" - a simple robot that can be programmed with some interesting behaviors
Two motors to drive two main wheels
Two touch sensors to detect when the robot has bumped into something
Two light sensors to detect if the robot is positioned over something "light" or "dark"
First behavior: using the two motors, make the robot move around
Second behavior: move around, avoiding obstacles by bumping into them and turning appropriately
Third behavior: follow a line (demo+movies)
Fourth behavior: navigate a maze without bumping into things (movie)
Fifth behavior: trash collection (movies)
Robotics Exposition - Upstairs
