Assignments

From Maslab 2011

Checkpoints should be completed on the assigned date unless you are explicitly excused in which case you should finish the checkpoint ASAP. Please find a staff member to check you off. The check-offs are recorded on the staff wiki.

Contents 1 Checkpoint 1 2 Checkpoint 2 3 Checkpoint 3 4 Checkpoint 4 5 Checkpoint 5 6 Checkpoint 6 7 Checkpoint 7 8 Checkpoint 8 9 Final Paper 10 Resumes

Checkpoint 1

When you get to lab, your team should find a place to sit and start looking over the wiki. There are some things on the wiki we did not tell you in lecture! It is critical that you thoroughly read through the material in the course related links.

Your team should wait to be called to do the following things. Your entire team should come when you are called to:

1. Pick up your kit.
2. Pick up your computer and uOrc board.

When you can, you should:

1. Verify that your kit is complete.
2. Assemble the pegbot: bolt on motors, etc.
3. Write a "hello world" program. This program should be run on the eeePC and transmit "Hello World" to BotClient running on your personal computer. In other words run BotClient on your computer and send messages to it using the classes in the maslab.telemetry.channel package.
4. Program your pegbot to perform a simple task such as driving forward for three seconds and stopping.
5. Add a file to your subversion repository.
6. Show your finished eeePC hello world and pegbot to a staff member.

Once you have completed these tasks, you are free to leave. However, you are strongly encouraged to stay in lab until it closes, designing your robot and working on your future assignments. We encourage you to look at the wikis from past years to see what teams have done in the past, and whether those ideas have worked.

Checkpoint 2

You should prepare information (a document or something posted on your wiki) of the following information.

1. Must have a robot strategy
2. Must have a schedule for IAP
3. Must have a mechanical outline, drawings or SolidWorks
4. Must have a software architecture outline

Schedule:

• 1:00pm - Teams 1 & 2
• 1:20pm - Teams 3 & 4
• 1:40pm - Teams 5 & 6
• 2:00pm - break
• 2:20pm - Teams 7 & 8
• 2:40pm - Teams 9 & 10
• 3:00pm - Teams 11 & 12
• 3:20pm - break
• 3:40pm - Teams 13 & 14

Checkpoint 3

1. Publish images from the camera to the botclient
2. Can see and identify the color palate correctly
3. This is your chance to get help with your vision code!

Checkpoint 4

Use a bump sensor, IR, or Ultrasound to:

1. Drive up to a wall,
2. sense it (maybe back up),
3. and turn to the side

Experiment with other data inputs (sonar, gyro, camera, encoders).

Checkpoint 5

1. Robot can turn, see a ball, and drive towards it, stop, and publish to the botclient
2. This is your chance to get help with your PID code!

Checkpoint 6

Your robot must pass all the compliance tests for the final competition including:

1. Must be able to calibrate colors within 1 minute
2. Must be able to select starting color within 10 seconds (using program, button, etc.) Cannot be started over ssh.
3. Must stop after 5 minutes of operation

Checkpoint 7

Progress Report Meeting This checkpoint is the final assessment before the final contest. Your robot should be mostly done, except for minor tweaking.

After this point (and if at all possible, for some time before it), you should probably be spending most of your time testing your robot in full multi-minute runs of your exploration code on the largest playing area you can find, and finding bugs where your robot gets stuck or otherwise fails to recover from an error condition. Every year, we see several teams who put a lot of effort into robots that get stuck early in the contest because of some stupid bug that they didn't test enough to catch. Don't let this happen to your team.

1. Update staff on status of your robot and notify us of any changes to the strategy or design.
2. Please prepare a list of critical things your team feels that it still needs to finish, how critical these are, how long you think it will take to finish these items, and how you plan on doing so.
3. Please bring your robot to the meeting.

Schedule:

• 1:00pm - Teams 1 & 2
• 1:20pm - Teams 3 & 4
• 1:40pm - Teams 5 & 6
• 2:00pm - break
• 2:20pm - Teams 7 & 8
• 2:40pm - Teams 9 & 10
• 3:00pm - Teams 11 & 12
• 3:20pm - break
• 3:40pm - Teams 13 & 14

Checkpoint 8

Playability Test

Your robot:

1. Must be able to identify color palate in 26-100 in multiple distinct test locations
2. Must be able to wander, find balls, get balls and attempt to score

Final Paper

Your final paper should be 1250–1750 words (5–7 pages) long, and should summarize your

1. overall strategy
2. mechanical design and sensors
3. software design
4. overall performance
5. conclusions/suggestions for future teams

The paper must be complete by 11:59 pm on February 3 for your team to receive credit for Maslab. (That's the latest we can push the deadline, since grades need to be turned in).

Use clean spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and exhibit clear, concise language. You're welcome write in an informal tone and have fun with the paper, but we do expect to see content and will not accept large quantities of BS or incoherent writing. (See previous year's papers for examples of what we expect).

Your paper should be written as part of the wiki (please do not upload a document). Images should be uploaded to the wiki as well; do not include links (we archive all the papers, and we don't want to lose pictures when links change!).

Note: if you have suggestions for the staff on improvements to Maslab that weren't included in the feedback survey, please include them in your final papers. We're always looking for ways to improve the course.

Resumes

Maslab collects student resumes for Maslab and sponsor use. The resumes are used to assess the interests and background of Maslab students, and to provide information for our sponsors who are looking to recruit interns and employees. Please email to Ellen (yichen@mit.edu) your document in PDF or Microsoft Word format.