Delaney Taylor B7 2/4/14

VEX Reflection
For our VEX robotics project, we had a group of five people. Our task was to build a robot that was capable of winding a specific length of thread. We were also required to have the program stop in an emergency when a button switch is pressed. We wound string from one spool to another spool, which was attached to a spinning motor. Other teams also worked on different tasks including ball sensing soccer goals, elevators, and automatically guided vehicles. We learned from the other teams how to use sensors that were different than the ones we used. The teams also worked together when troubleshooting bugs in the programming. Our team worked mostly in two groups. Another member and I worked mainly on the building of the robot. The other three members worked mostly on the programming. However, we finished constructing the robot before they finished with the code so we joined them to finish the program. I feel confident that I could accomplish the design, construction, and programming of the robot individually if necessary. Our team went beyond these constraints and had the robot sense when the end of the string was wound using a line follower. When the string ran out, the robot automatically turned off the motor that wound the string. The motor was also monitored and controlled by a shaft encoder, which counted the rotations of the spool that was winding the thread. This gave us the ability to accurately wind specific lengths of the thread by changing a value in the program to stop the motor after it had rotated a set number of times. Our program ran exactly the way it was designed and satisfied all the constraints of the challenge description. However, if we had more time, it would have been optimal for our program to be running on a loop. That would have enabled our robot to keep winding the string until it ran out, instead of in short bursts. We had trouble with setting the loop up because we used three sensors to monitor the strings progress. It was very complex to program. We had to redo our program at least three times in order to satisfy the constraints of all of the sensors. Despite the hiccups in the programming, our robot performed very successfully. It performed exactly as it was meant to and had an aesthetically pleasing design. We painted a cardboard cutout that slipped over the robot that made the string appear to be Princess Rapunzels hair with the robot as her castle. It came together very well and didnt inhibit the function of the mechanical components of the robot. Overall, our team was very successful in the brainstorming, design, and execution of this project.