Design Brief

The task is to design and build an intelligent mobile robot that is capable of successfully navigating, and collecting rubbish from, an arena in the robotics laboratory. The arena will be rectangular in shape and contain four different types of rubbish; it will also have four uniquely coloured corners. The robot will be required to autonomously navigate the arena collecting items, before continuing to identify each item and transporting it to the correct corner or ‘drop zone’.

The four different types of rubbish, together with their corresponding drop zones are detailed below:

• Pepsi cans – blue corner
• Plastic bottles – green corner
• Coke cans – red corner
• Tennis balls – yellow corner

A squiggle ball will also be placed in the arena and will act as moving target. If collected this can be dropped in any corner.

The scoring system to be used in demonstrations is as follows:

• Successfully collect an item, 10 points
• Deposit an item in the correct drop zone, 20 points
• Catch the squiggle ball, 100 points

There will be two chances to demonstrate the robot. In the first demonstration the robot will be run individually for a period of 15 minutes, the second demonstration will take the form of a competition where two robots compete against each other in 5-minute bouts. The highest score achieved by the robot will be carried forward.

Requirements

Functional

• The robot must be able to move in a way that allows it to complete the task
  • The robot must be able to turn a specified angle
  • The robot must be able to drive in a straight line
  • The robot should be able to navigate the arena without getting stuck
  • While not carrying an object, the robot should move around the arena following a search pattern
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• The robot must have sufficient sensors to allow it to complete its task
  • The robot should include sensors to detect the position of objects in the arena
  • The robot should include sensors to identify objects that have been collected
  • The robot should include sensors to detect walls
  • The robot should include sensors to detect and identify corners
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• The robot must be able to collect and identify objects
  • The robot should be capable of detecting objects
  • Once an object is detected, the robot should adjust its course to move towards that object
  • The robot must have an appropriate mechanism for catching and releasing objects
  • The robot should be able to distinguish between the objects it collects (coke cans, pepsi cans, tennis balls, fanta orange bottles and fanta lemon bottles)
  • The robot must be able to transport the object to the correct corner
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• The robot must be able to detect and identify corners (red, green, blue or yellow)
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• The robot should release objects when in the correct corner

Non-functional

• The robot must be based on a PC104 handyboard
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• The robot must be built of Lego
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• The robot must be complete by 5th December 2003
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• The robot should be able to run without human intervention for 15 minutes
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