Union College
1999 Robot Camp Diary
Day  1
On the first day, students learned soldering techniques by soldering a little board that flashed an LED light. Well, IF they soldered it correctly, it flashed. And they all did! They then proceeded to solder their own Basic Stamp board that forms the "brains" of the Micromouse robot. This was completed and boards were tested using a test program that output an "on and off" signal on the output pins which flashed a test probe if working correctly.

Josh and Sarah concentrate on their work and Matt looks up for the camera.


Matt E. and Matt R. soldered a Basic Stamp board too since this controls the hexipod walker.
Everyone learned the fine art of soldering and had working boards by the end of the day!

Day  2
On the second day the students learned about servo motors. For the Micromouse application we had to modify the servo motors so that they could be used to drive the wheels. This involved several steps and once one was completed, it was time to start on the next!

Once the servos had been modified, the next task was to assemble the robot chassis and attach the batteries, switches, servos and Basic Stamp board.


By lunchtime, most students had working robots!
 


In the afternoon, the fun part began - programming the robots to do cool things! We started by programming it to go in a straight line. This required some adjusting of the motor speeds, since the motors do not spin at exactly the same speed.Then we tried turns.

The returning students, Matt Eggelston and Matt Rem, built walking robots!

Day  3
Day 3 brought more programming lessons. Students learned about loops, branches, variables and subroutines. We set up a practice obstacle course during lunchtime using bricks donated by Dagostino Building Blocks Inc.

This year we added 4 lever switches to the front and back of the robot so that it could detect when it collided with another object. A crimp-on connector was used to attach the switches to the Basic Stamp board. Then  the students wrote some programs to use this information to make the robot back up and turn when it hit an obstacle.

Joey resets his robot for another try.

Pondering robot behavior is common. If we understand how the program relates to the behavior, we can program more sophisticated behaviours.The big table was handy when lots of people were testing robots at the same time.

Day 4

On Thursday the contest rules were announced and students began to write the code for traversing the obstacle course.

We very busy debugging code, resoldering and recrimping broken wires, modifying bumper contraptions  and making up winning stradegies for friday's competition. So busy that we did not take any photos!

Day 5

On Friday morning the students worked hard on their contest programs and after lunch the camp concluded with a head to head ladder tournament to see which robot was the fastest and most consistent in its journey through the obstacle course.
Although everyone was a winner, we did give prizes for the three who made it furthest in the ladder tournament.
 


Below are the campers holding their micromice - click on the thumbnail photos to see larger versions.


 

Will

Brad

Spencer

Joey

Dave

Greg

Josh

Matt E.

Matt G.

Matt H.

Matt R.

Nick

Robert

Sarah
  
More details of the final competition can be found on the Final Competition page.


Address questions or comments to camp@doc.union.edu