Bryan Talenfeld

            Tuesday in lab I spent 3 wasted hours trying to make the motor driver board that I had received start to work.  With only one received and it malfunctioning (possibly cut wrong), I gave up and ordered a dual motor driver.  I also put together a line following board.  On Wednesday I tested the line following board until all of the photo reflectors were giving correct values.  I still need to find an optimal distance and setup where they will show up correctly, but all 4 photo reflectors are functioning as they should.

            I improved my platform by connecting my line following board and harnessing my batteries so my robot could drive around on its own.  I also worked on grabbing values from the CMU cam and testing how I could view an object and have it tell me which color I need.  After going to Office Depot to purchase the materials for my board and traffic light, I realized I forgot colored paper for the traffic light.  For the time being, I tested my CMU cam by looking at my orange toolbox.  The CMU cam returned values in the TC command only when the orange toolbox was in range, otherwise giving me no values.  If this will work correctly for my 3 colors then I’ve found what I need for color detection.

            I received my motor driver on Friday.  I installed it and had obstacle avoidance functioning correctly by Saturday, so I finally have a robot that moves and uses its IR and bump switches (although they need to be fixed) correctly.  I installed a switch for the power of my robot and made it require a bumper push upon resetting to allow it to begin its program.  I will probably add a calibration routine later in the week.

            I received my voice system late Monday, so I’ve only had the opportunity to look at it so far and realize that it doesn’t seem difficult with limited commands, but I’ll probably need a slight boost on how to do that.  In lab this week I will need to get the voice going, as well as getting my photo reflectors to correctly read the line it will be following and then smooth out the line following routine.  After that, HOMER might be finished.