Jacob Lashin's 4960 Project: Lab 8

Objectives


Task A: Don’t Hit the Wall

Since I chose to complete Task A in Lab 5, my goal in this lab is to now have the robot drive up to the wall, perform a flip, and drive back in the same direction. We are supposed to utilize the Kalman Filter from lab 7, but I was not able to successfully implement it becuase of time restraints from COVID. To make up for this, I extroplated my TOF data forward to try to predict the future positions of the robot. I did this by estimating the speed of the robot and multiplying it by the average time of the loop. The next part was to actually preform the flip. I implemented it by driving the robot at full speed at the wall, then at the optimal distance, the robot would drive backwards at full speed. The sudden change in momentum would cause the robot to flip, as long as the tires had proper grip on the surface it was driving on. The most difficult part of the stunt was finding the proper surface for the robot to flip on. I couldn't get the robot to flip on a tile floor even after several tries, and cleaning the wheels and floor. I was successfull in flipping the robot on a carpet floor, but even then the results would vary from attempt to attempt. Additionally, I did not implement a PID controller for this becuase it would have dramstically decreased the max speed, which would have caused the robot not to flip. Below are several videos of the robot completing the stunt successfully, followed by a failed attempt.


Open Loop, Repeatable Stunts