ARTHR
Advancing, Reversing, Turning, and Halting Robot
date. 2019
city. Ypsilanti
School Project
Arthr was built and coded by myself and 2 other students for a class in 2019. The robot had 3 sensors: a touch sensor, an ultrasonic sensor, and a sound sensor.
When the touch sensor is pressed (not held) the robot is programmed to drive in reverse until told to stop.
When the ultrasonic sensor measures an obstacle less than 25cm in front of it, it will no longer drive forward.
The sound sensor was coded to listen and interpret different commands to follow. Namely, "go," "turn right," "turn left," and "stop."
The sound sensor was by far the most difficult sensor to program because it was not actually designed to understand language. Instead, it registered decibels. This means we could only program it to interpret commands based on the timing of the largest decibel recorded. You will notice in the video to the right that my partner, Haven, tells the robot to "GO" in a quick and loud command. When the robot hears the highest decibel early, it is programmed to drive forward. You will then hear Haven tell the robot to "STOP" in a similar fashion. This is because the robot will always interpret any command as "stop" if it is mid action. Next, Haven tells the robot to "turn... LEFT." When the robot hears the command start, it continues listening for a few moments for more. After a moment Haven raises his voice so that "left" will be a higher decibel than "turn." This means the robot will record the highest decibel as being late in its recording. He then tells the robot to "turn RIGHT," which would put the highest decibel somewhere in the middle of its recording.
Arthr's Screen
The video to the right shows Arthr's screen as we are giving commands. It begins by simply displaying which file is running.
When Haven says "go," the robot displays "Go" on the screen. When he says "stop," a stop sign appears. The left turn command shows "Turn ... LEFT." It is hard to see, because at the time I did not record the screen in the best light, but there is a little bar above the words to the far right to show that the highest decibel occurred late. This bar is more clear in the next command "Turn RIGHT," since the highest decibel occurs in the middle of the recording. He then tells Arthr to "go" until Arthr approaches a wall, at which point the ultrasonic sensor tells it to stop and Arthr says "Too close." Haven then presses the button to reverse, and finally tells the robot to stop again.
