Building the Obstacle Course
Hi again and welcome back to the blog! This week I’m excited to present some more practical content in the form of an obstacle course. The robot will begin at the start line as shown in the picture below, then continue avoiding the walls and stop in the ball collection zone for 20 seconds, finally the robot will rotate 180 degrees and make its way back to the start line. This obstacle course is to be built in a home environment and will be used by our resident robot in the future. The aim of this obstacle course is to demonstrate our coding skills by making the robot complete these turns and bends.
Even though this seemed like a stupidly simple task let me assure you it wasn’t so easy when your only source of materials comes from a student accommodation room. Firstly I collected any cardboard boxes in my room such as shoeboxes, juice cartons and Easter egg boxes, as they would form the most of the walls in the obstacle course. I then proceeded to find a straight upright surface which will form one of the two 2 metre walls needed at each side of the course. I decided that the side of my bed was the perfect combination of an immovable upright object, but not too tall with the ability to see and record above it.
The other extreme edge of the obstacle course will be constructed from a suitcase and juice drink cartons. Next I had a decision to either make the course easier or more difficult for myself as some dimensions such as (a) and the distance of walls (b) and (c) from the start line were variable. However me and my robot didn’t come here to compete, we came here to win therefore the smallest allowable dimensions will be used such as 25cm for (a). I used a straight edge ruler to accurately cut out walls (a),(b) and (c) from upcycled cardboard boxes. Finally I used transparent tape to secure the cardboard walls (a), (b) and (c) to the outer extreme walls of the bed and suitcase. This is the final result!
When the obstacle course was finally constructed I decided to write some simple pseudocode in order to organise and compile my mindset when writing the automation code. The final code will be much longer and more complex than this pseudocode however it will rest on the same principles outlined.
I hope you enjoyed this weeks blog detailing the construction of the obstacle course! Be sure to check back next week when I will keep you updated with a video of the robot completing this course. If you like the content posted here please consider following my profile.
