Final Review

I believe our project was a success even though it failed to perform on the presentation day. We can prove the buggy’s performance via the video link in our blog (please see below). Hopefully this will be taken into consideration when allocation marks for the buggy performance. We discovered that the buggy showed good tracking skills by following the black line on the paper.
Conclusions of the buggy...
The Line Sensor should follow the presented design using visible light
The Chassis should follow the presented design except for allowing for other modifications
to the design.
The LDRs themselves were not of the best quality and because of their sensitivity we had to keep changing the values of the program.
On the improvement point, we could improve on the buggy’s programming. We could have programmed the buggy to reverse but as we concentrated too much on the design therefore we didn’t have enough time to do the final programming.

Overall the project was rewarding as most of the team members worked closely together to bring this project to a conclusion. (Adam Rana, Aftab Tahkur, Suraj Sohan and Harmandip Singh).Also I feel the buggy’s performance is now to a competitive level and can perform to meet the objectives.

Afy conclusion

all in all i think the buggy project was a success we did manage to get it to work however on the day, typical as it is it didn't work. the workload was split equally between the five of us, however the commitment started to dicipate. in the end we stuck our heads together and got it all done and finished. it was a shame that the buggy decided to blow itself up on the presenting day, we had tried everything in the morning to reprogram it and all sorts but never accomplished it. the group members gave all there interest and put forward their ideas' however stupid we all worked together. i think if we were to do this again it would be more structured so that if we were to run into a problem like this we would have more options to overcome it. i also believe we should have used another material because this made the buggy heavy n depreciated the power weight ratio.

Suraj Conclusion

I feel that the project was fairly successful, even though the robot didnt work correctly on the demonstration day. We made great progress and had the robot following the line. We have included a video of the robot following the line and then turning to the left. We then attempted to improve the robot so that it will also turn to the right, and then stop once it reached a solid line from left to right. In the process of doing this we hit a dead end. A problem occurred which made the robot completely useless. We believe that the microchip used had been damage in some way. We realised this after we had improved the coding and then attempted to reprogram the chip. However there is some light at the end of the tunnel. it was a great learing curve and i feel that if we had a replacement mirco chip we would have been able to reprogram it and have the robot working.

Last minute tinkering

On the testing day we ran into a few problems. The buggy stopped working completely. We were unsure of the problem so we had to investigate. Firstly we checked that the batteries were ok (they were fine). then we attempted to reprogram the chip as this may be the cause of the problem. This is were we had the problem. everytime we attempted to re program the chip an error message appered listing a number of possible causes. This made us think that we had a wiring problem, possibly a short circuit. We then checked all connections and we even used insulation tape to prevent any close wires from touching one another. The problem was not resolved and therefore lead us to believe that our chip had gone faulty.

The Working Buggy

just to clarify i did not push the buggy across the line i just helped it along like everyone else did

Program used for our buggy

Development of the Buggy

Build Stage

Here are some of the pictuers taken throughout the build stage of our project...

This is the final design of the buggy structure... also allowing the space for the circuit to be mounted on...

Build Stage

As some members of the team worked through the circuitry of the buggy, the designing of the buggy was also undertaken. We had to make sure that our buggy is strong and robust hence we had to take several ideas into consideration inputted by all members of the team.

The use of construction toys....

We used these construction materials as the final design can easily be altered if need as it would not be a permanent construction. The choices of toys were Lego, K'nex and Meccano.

We had to compare their advantages and disadvantages before choosing the correct material to use.

The use of nuts and bolts is a much more reliable method for the construction as it is interchangeable. It is also cheap enough to use. The use of meccano will also deliver a strong chassis for our buggy.