Spin me round, round.

I don't think anyone was more surprised than we were when our robot made it a good 2/3 of the way down the hallway. The mob of BCT students followed Chester the Jester down the hallway eagerly while we trailed behind, confident he wouldn't make it. The fresh batteries must've given him that boost he needed to make it that far at least before crashing into the wall. It was interesting to see how the other groups approached the challenge as no one could really consitently make it to the finish line, even those who has chosen to use sensors. I still think sensors are the way to go but with a little more refinement in the programming and familiarity with the software and the robot. The frustrated mood from yesterday was lightened a bit as we looked at what everyone had created and shared ideas in both design and programming.

I also think we all breathed a sigh of relief upon finding out what our project for today was. This time, our only limit seemed to be time, the pieces in the box and our creativity as we were to construct and program our robot to express the character we had created. In keeping with our ideas of the Jester, we brainstormed circlular pathways to mimic the shape of it's hat and the juggling balls and sound effects or music. In terms of construction, all the really stuck was the idea of a Jester's hat so it was to the internet for inspiration.

Searches for 'Jester' didn't yeild many responses and so we widened our criteria to anything that related to juggling or circles or performing. I again found myself thinking about creating a program which enabled it to dance which brought me to this video which I enjoyed.

We also liked the idea of a Ball coaster but decided it was a little to complex so from here we decided to just start with a base and just modify building onto that. We started with the Striker as we definitely wanted to attach arms so just thought to attach two instead of one. We followed the instructions to build the 3 motor chassis but modified to use only two motors so we would have the third to operate the arms. While the guys got to work with the pieces, I began the programming. I played around with rotations and circles to create a series of rotations and figure 8s.

We faced a few constructional difficulties in terms of making sure it balances, stays upright, rotate the arms in the right direction and so that the arms don't hit anything. We found it was a lot harder constructing from our own ideas as all of these elements had to be taken into account which we took for granted with the step by step instructions. The programing was easier as there was not set path or pattern we had to follow but I had trouble converting over the path I wanted it to take into the programming.

When the programming and construction was complete, Chester danced around in circles and loops flailing his arms wielding two balls. The closest we could get to juggling but we were pleased with him and even managed to have a few laughs.

There is so much more I'd like to be able to do with the programming as researching on the internet has shown that it is incredible what other people have accomplished with the exact same pieces and software. It does make me wonder what the limits of the programming and construction truly are. Rather appropriately, if I may add, the Futurama episode on tonight featured all the robots being activated to destroy humans who struggled to survive not just the attack, but rather also seemed to have more difficulty surviving without their aid. It is incredible how much we rely on machines and they have in fact been programmed to make our lives easier but how little we know about their programming which enables them to operate as such.

Overall, I enjoyed this project more than yesterday's one as I felt it gave us more creative license to create and modify. I'm still finding it challenging using the programming software to convert my ideas into the robot's actions but I'd also like to have a bit more of a go constructing as I haven't done much of that yet. I think that is why the last two days have been frustrating at times as we are not capable to commute our creative ideas over to to technological aspect just yet.

Tomorrow we start our first brief for real and I am eager, perhaps also because it is entitled 'Robo-Dance...'