Fire Fighting Robot

We’ve finally finished our fire fighting robot! If anyone is interested in seeing the robot in action, check out the video below. I know it’s kinda boring, we probably should’ve taken a longer video… but alas, we forgot.

This was taken while we were testing it’s sweeping functionality. It scans the 3×3 grid in front, then if and only if a candle is detected, the extinguishing mechanism (the sponge on the arm) is actuated and poof the flame is gone.

You’ll notice after it extinguishes the first two candles that it “bounces” against the black line before stopping. This is actually its self-aligning algorithm. One of the biggest problems we encountered during the course of the project was that the robot would be misaligned whenever it stopped. Essentially, the momentum would carry the robot in anunpredictable direction… Sometimes left, sometimes right. Obviously, as a result, the subsequent trajectory would be affected as well. So, in order to ensure that the robot is straight before proceeding, it is equipped with two photodiodes on the bottom that enables it to do a kind of a repeated “parallel parking” against the line that it’s perpendicular with (aka the line in front of it)… It does this backing up and driving forward motion repeatedly until it is perfectly aligned. Get it? If not, watch the video!

PS. If you’re wondering… here’s the code for the straightening algorithm =)

while( flag == 0) { 

   set_dc1_power(30);
   set_dc2_power(30);

   //not on black
   while( (sensor[2] > highBlack2) && (sensor[3] > highBlack3) ) {  }       

   set_dc1_power(0);
   set_dc2_power(0);

   sensor2 = sensor[2];
   sensor3 = sensor[3];

   //if both sensors are on black, we're straight
   if((sensor2 < highBlack2)  && (sensor3 < highBlack3)) {
      flag=1;
      break;
   }
   else {
      //right sensor is on black and left is on white
      if( (sensor2  highBlack3) ) {
         set_dc1_power(-35);            //back up
         while(sensor[2] < white2){}    //until white
         set_dc1_power(0);
      }
      //left sensor is on black and right is on white
      else if( (sensor3  highBlack2) ) {
         set_dc2_power(-35);             //back up
         while(sensor[3] < white3){}     //until white
         set_dc2_power(0);
      }
   }
}

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