Project 1: Part Four

One of the faults of our team was assuming too much instead of testing and over-checking. This was particularly the case when it came to the programming. It wasn't until after midday when we came round to putting the robot with all its tools into the box that we started having problems with the programming. Even with a light in the box it still had trouble detecting the walls and also due to the echo created by the box, it also responded to the sound of its own movement. The movements of the robot were also really jittery and rugged which, along with the amount of weight on the back of the robot, caused it to topple over after a short amount of time.

The old code

We overcame most of these problems by rewriting the code in a different structure to make it cleaner and smoother in its movements. The new code also caused the robot to react to both sensors at the same time unlike the old code. We also had to put the sensitivity of the sound sensor as minimal as possible as well as covering the mic with sponge to try reduce the amount of times the robot heard its own movement. The robot was also slightly reconstructed to bring more of the weight to the front of the robot and also use some leftover sponge to keep the force of the vivid strong on the paper. This took up a lot of our time and was the biggest problem we faced.

 After this was fixed we were able to focus on creating the art from the robot. We used A1 white sheets of paper for the paint art and clear A1 sheets for the vivid art. We cut out a whole in the side of the box to film the robot in the box. The box was also given a bit of colour which was nothing more than to give it a bit more character. We used the primary colours; red, blue and yellow since they would give the best mix of variety. There was two different colours in the syringes and one other colour on the sponge.

Final Robot

I am pleased with the final outcome of our paintings, it was what we envisioned and set out to create from the idea and meaning for our art. It was not perfect and could have been improved with further testing and better sensing equipment, but that might have made the art the way it is now and given it more of a robotic feel.