|
West Virginia Tech Design Team Wins with PICmicro™ MCU Robot
Everyone stood in stunned disbelief except for the five students and two faculty members from West Virginia Tech. The Tech robot had won the whole competition, including the grand finale the exhibition match with the robot from WVU and the brightly colored dragon painted on its side. The Tech robot with skewed plywood sides and lots of Tech bumper stickers was the cheapest, simplest, and best design. Its brain was a Microchip PICmicro® MCU and its muscles were two stepper motors and a Dustbuster vacuum to suck up the metal balls. Its eyes were four infrared photo detectors to detect the white grid on an 8’x8'’ black arena.
 At the start of each round of the competition, the robots had to be smaller than 12"x12" and shorter than 18". The robots had to pick upsteel balls on the grid and one brass ball on an 18-inch pole and deposit them in a sidebox. The robots had to move autonomously. There could be no remote controller lurking in the background directing its motion. The robot had to do the job all by itself.
The design team for Tech was nervous at the beginning of the first round. The afternoon before the competition a voltage regulator had failed. "Would the replacement fail also, or would something go out?" was the main worry. At the appointed hour, the robot was placed in its starting box, and the team had to stand back. After 30 seconds the GO signal was ON and the robot began to move.slowly, methodically. It spun about by the two independently controlled stepper motors and the high-pitch whistle of the vacuum turned on. Ball after ball was sucked up through the hose mounted on its backside. The robot collected twelve balls before dumping them into the bin. The PICmicro® device was in total control, running less than 4k of code in interrupt mode. None of the competing schools, including Penn State Erie, Ohio University, Cedarville College, were able to score a single point.
The team members were Jim Shumate, Jim Witmer, Joe Berry, Chou Guan Chew, and Jose Mejia. They began the project in January knowing the competition would be fierce and that time was against them. But through determination and lots of Saturdays and evenings, the team of students came through, first in getting the motors to run, then in getting the sensors to detect the lines and then integrating the vacuum. These five students formed a good friendship as well and earned at least an "A" from their advisor.
When asked how much overhead the PICmicro® has left – in anticipation of next year’s competition – Jim Shumate, lead programmer said, "The PICmicro® has plenty of processing left over."
|
|
West Virginia Tech Design Team Wins…
