Team Strategy

When the contest starts, our robot will start with the use of three infrared sensors to determine which side of the board it is in and in what direction it is facing. With this information it can determine how much it has to turn so that the claw can push the four balls directly behind it to our scoring area. There will be two balls for each color, which guarantees our team two points no matter which ball color has the most votes.

Immediately after the four balls are pushed to our scoring area, the robot will head back to its starting position. To get there more efficiently, phototransistors will be used to detect the starting area’s color pattern as well as a distance sensor to determine how far the robot has gone in reverse. Once the robot is back to its starting position, it will turn either left or right and head towards the first set of balls. The robot will use the distance sensor to determine an appropriate distance from the wall to catch the balls. After it catches as many balls as possible it can proceed to the next set of balls. The robot will obtain these balls by riding over them and having the balls pass through a one-way gate.

After the robot has acquired both sets of balls (about eight balls) it will stop between both scoring areas (measured by the distance from both walls) until there is about ten seconds left of the match. It will keep all balls within itself and decide where to drop them off depending on the outcome of the votes. If the color of the balls inside the robot is losing, it will drop these off in the opponent’s scoring area. Otherwise, it will move towards its own scoring area, and know when to stop by the measurements from the distance sensors, being careful not to knock out the 4 balls already in the scoring area.

When brainstorming strategies for the robot, our team also considered looking at the movements of the opponent’s robot to then decide which way our robot will start looking for balls. We agreed that the opponent’s robot may not be the most reliable source of information and that it would be more productive to develop a plan independent of any action taken by the other robot. An independent strategy will help us be in control of what we want our robot to be doing. In the event of an unfortunate collision with the opposing team’s robot, some minor error detection will take place to align itself back where we wanted our robot to be. It is very unlikely that a robot could hit us hard enough to take us out of the competition unintentionally.