{"id":512,"date":"2022-12-17T03:16:35","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T03:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portfolio.wcu.edu\/fjgonzaleztrejo1\/?p=512"},"modified":"2022-12-22T19:56:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T19:56:36","slug":"final-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portfolio.wcu.edu\/fjgonzaleztrejo1\/2022\/12\/17\/final-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighting Robot Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

The problem and goal of the final project is to build a robot that can navigate itself through a maze and to extinguish a flame at the end of the maze. The robot has to be able to complete this goal and execute functions autonomously. Here is an image of the maze our robot is expected to navigate:<\/p>\n

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The chassis of our robot is going to be made out of foam board, a light but sturdy enough for the job. When the placement of our components are finalized, we will cut the chassis down to an optimal size and shape. To drive our robot, we used two 28BYJ-48 stepper motors, each connected to motor drivers. for which we have to 3D print brackets to mount our pair of motors to the chassis using nuts and bolts. I have already made a post presenting the process in which we designed, printed, and installed the mounts to the stepper motor. It can be found here. <\/a><\/p>\n

For our robot to navigate through the maze, we used an Ultrasonic sensor to measure the distance from the robot to the wall. For our robot, we programmed the Arduino to make the robot turn to the right when it detects a wall within 14 inches in front of the sensor. More about the function of the ultrasonic sensor can be found on this post<\/a>. Our robot also had a infrared sensor installed to detect a flame. Our final pair of components, a blower fan and relay, would operate based on the signal received from the infrared sensor to blow out the flame. Once again, you can find a post outlining the operation of this part of the robot here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My partner Mason and I had different approaches to solve the problem, and both led to the successful assembly and operation of the robot. Mason’s perspective on this final project can be found on his blog post here<\/a>. On my end, the first thing I did was the setup of the Arduino to work together with our components. This involved the creation of a “foundational” code in which we could build the rest of our code around. This foundational code consisted of a stepper motor library and general operational functions of the stepper motor, for example, a function containing the amount of steps the left stepper motor needs to perform to make a right turn.<\/p>\n

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Naturally, along our design process, we needed to perform tweaks and redesigns on some of the components and code. The code within the Arduino went through many iterations and a handful of complete reworks to reach the point where both of us were satisfied with the performance of the robot. Code from assignments completed in the past was gathered and integrated into our foundational code, and threshold values were adjusted for optimal operation of the robot. Some examples include the the trial and error performed to find a distance to best perform a turn without being too far away from a wall or causing the robot to be too close and hit the wall while turning. We also had a brief issue of the infrared sensor detecting the flame but not stopping the robot, which was fixed with a tweak in the threshold value to stop the robot.<\/p>\n

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Despite the flame triggering the infrared sensor, the robot ignores this and performs a turn.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Initiating a turn too close to the wall causes the robot to hug the wall after completing the first turn and eventually hits the wall performing its second turn.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We learned and gained experience with coding on the Arduino and discovering different conditions and functions that helped us perform the action we wanted. We utilized a stepper motor library that enabled us to set the speed of the stepper motors in terms of revolutions per minutes, and to make a stepper motor perform a user-input amount of steps. This helped us to build the code to create a function to steer the robot to the right using a value discovered from trial and error. If-statements were crucial to our code, but was improved with a simple AND condition:<\/p>\n

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This string of code propels the robot forward with both stepper motors performing 100 steps each only if both conditions in the argument is true, in this case, if the robot is more than 14 inches away from the way or if the infrared sensor detects a value not within the threshold. If one or both of the conditions are false, then the robot pauses and reads the infrared sensor again if a flame is detected, or detects no flame and the robot initiates a turn.<\/p>\n

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When our robot was finalized, it was tested on the maze multiple times to ensure consistent performance, and we stops any further modifications to ensure the robot operates properly to be presented. This is our final result:<\/p>\n

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The robot was proven to be successful in its goal to navigate the maze and extinguish the flame. Watch one of our robot’s successful trial runs:<\/p>\n

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