Fire Fighting Robot- Part 7 Problems

We came across several problems during the process of having the car finding the candle. The main problem was that the environment that the car was in constantly changed. As long as the candle was lit, it decreased in size which would change the values that the sensors would read at a certain distance. Because of this, we had to constantly change the values in our program and constantly check that the sensors were reading the same values. In order to avoid this, we tried to have the same sized candle. We had to have a relatively low candle so that it wouldn't come in contact with the shaker or burn the plastic. When it was getting too low, we changed the candle and picked a new one so that the flame would be 11cm of the ground, just to keep things consistent. Here is a picture of the size of the candle that we used:Another problem was the the sensors kept shifting. Obviously, this would alter the readings of the sensors. So in order to avoid that, we taped the sensors at the exact positions that we wanted so that would not move. This actually worked pretty well and we didn't have to worry about re-adjusting the sensors all the time.

Another problem was that baking soda isn't the best thing to work with. A lot of other groups in the class were using baking soda and it left the floor very messy. As you can see in the picture below, baking soda got everywhere and it really affected the way our MotorCar moved. The baking soda made the wheels slip and the shaft encoders don't take into account slippage, which would really affect the counts and our straight proportional program embedded in our larger program. It also affected the way the MotorCar turned. Instead of spinning quickly, it made these large circles which affected the car's position and the values that the sensors would be reading.

Here is a picture of the baking soda on the wheels:
In order to avoid this program, we cleaned the wheels regularly and we swept the floor after every test run. We sometimes had to clean the floor with water because the baking soda accumulated so much.

Another problem was a weight distribution issue. We were concerned that because most of weight was on the right side which would make the car topple over. Well it just did that. Here is a video of it:

In order to fix that we added some batteries on the back and left side of the car as weights to create some more stability. This proved to work very well because the car did not topple over again.