GE423 Robot Car Group 6
Project by Anthony Lin, Trevor Price, Matt Byars, Charles Boardman
The goal of this project is to design and build a robot car to navigate the provided course, move to five specific spots in a specific order, and collect and deposit colored golf balls in to their respective rings. This is accomplished through A* Path Planning and Dead reckoning control. As car is in motion, the LADAR scans the surrounding area and updates the A* map, and the system continuously updates the A* path to the designated points. The camera, in the meanwhile, tracks for colored balls that meet the desired HSV threshold for the orange and blue golf balls. When one of the two colors thresholds are met, the A* path is updated to move the car towards the golf ball. Once the car approaches the ball, the respective gate opens up, and the car moves to capture the ball, and the A* path is updated to travel to the desired point in the course. Once all the desired points in the course are reached, the car then navigates to the point outside of the course, and travels back through the course, depositing the balls in the desired rings before reaching the final point and returning to the start.
As the robot car is travelling through the
course, the path information is sent from the robot to LabVIEW, where the path
and the location of the golf balls are plotted out on a picture object. The
coordinates and the color of each ball collected is recorded on screen. The
gate and compartments are divided into two parts: the blue side and the orange
side. The original design of the gates involved attaching the door to the base
with a hinge, and tying a string from the door to an RC servo, which iterates
between two points, one to open, and one to close. A rubber band between the
door and the base ensured the gate closed once the ball was collected. However,
when the robot car turned or stopped, the momentum of the ball usually forced
its way through the gap between the door and the walls. The second design
removed the string and rubber band, by attaching the gate directly to the RC
servo, and having the RC servo move the gate itself between two points, instead
of relying on a rubber band to close the gate. The doors were originally 3D printed
with blue plastic, which caused the camera to recognize the doors as blue golf
balls, so we wrapped the doors in black duct tape in order to prevent confusion.
A piece of cardboard in the back of each of the compartments prevents the ball
from bouncing out after being collected.
The Robot Car in Action:
Download the C-code and LabVIEW files: here