A simulation that our team created and will continue to utilize is a replica of the Beyond Botball competition game board, made of the specified materials. The purpose of this simulation of the game board was to see how the robots would react to the multiple obstacles presented in the game board. For example the fiberglass surface was a very slippery surface and having the game board replica allowed us to test and see if the robot had enough traction on the wheels to move effectively and efficiently. What we learned that the current wheels we were using weren’t efficient. This affected our plans because we changed our wheels to the wheels that could contour to the shape of the board to give more traction for the robot.
Another simulation that we did was on the replica game board. It was rolling the blue “water” balls down the peak to see where they would land. The goal of this simulation was to see if there was a set area where the blue balls most likely landed. The reason we ran this simulation was to decide whether to attach a camera to the CBC robot or to just program it to move to places where the balls tended to land. During this simulation we learned that the blue balls didn’t follow a set pattern to where they were going to land. This in turn meant that the only way to locate the blue balls was to use the color camera.
Prototypes
A prototype that we designed was brainstorming ideas for the create robot on a white board. The purpose of this session of prototyping was to lay out our ideas for the create robot before building it. During the session of prototyping on the white board a basic model was drawn out to help convey our ideas for the robot. Along with the model possible attachments for the robot were drawn next to the drawn model show the multiple options our group could have done for the create robot final design. Overall through the prototyping on the white board we learned that we wanted a sort of plow to pick up some of the tribbles in the cups.