Week 4

With the physical design completed, its time to turn to the programming of the robot.  This is the more difficult task of the project.  The robot will be performing several functions and the program needs to be written so that each function can execute without interfering with other functions.

So far a line follow algorithm has been established.  This is the primary way the robot will be navigating the building.  The color sensor is used to determine a black line against a white surface.  The robot will then follow this line.  The video here shows the robot following a line pretty well.

Up next, we'll need to have the robot interrupt it's line following algorithm to allow it to perform other functions and then resume the line follow algorithm upon completion of these functions.  Hopefully we can have an update next week that will allow this.

So far the team is on schedule with the project and barring any setbacks should complete the project with all desired functions on time.

Week 3

Week 3 has come and gone and the final design for the SpyBot is complete.  A few changes were made to the way we wanted to robot to perform its functions and this affected our overall design.  We've decided that instead of physically extracting the sensitive information discovered while exploring the building, the SpyBot will now "download" the information.  Upon locating a target, the robot will determine if the target is hostile or a piece of information relative to the mission.  Hostile targets will be subdued with a hammer like weapon and sensitive information will be downloaded for retrieval at the extraction point.

In order to do this the physical design was simplified by only utilizing 1 NXT Brick to perform all functions.