Well this is my last school year as most of you already know - in this year we are working on our final exam which is a project that includes programming, electronics, and other cool tech stuff. My team (me and my good friend NGBigfield) are building a robot that simulates a battle by fighting another team - each team robot shoots a laser to it's opponent laser sensor, each hit drains the opponent life points. how does this really works? well:
What does the project uses:
- Server application and clients developed in VB .net. (1 server application and 4 different clients)
- VHDL firmware written to an Altera chip, this chip controls the robot
motors and laser - getting information from an RS232 port.
- Python application running on a symbian mobile with an accelerometer
to control the robot with it's bluetooth connection (Can be seen in the link below).
More information about this project can be found in these links:
- More information and progress
- Video and first impression
- Nokia N95 controls the nBot with the acclerometer
- Video showing a small robot battle
1. Each team have one notebook and one desktop PC - on each robot we put the notebook so the robot will be able to get the data we are sending from the desktop PC, the data is being sent using the wireless network.
2. Another desktop PC is our server, this PC basically manage all of the health calculation, game phases, time left, bullets remaining, and rules for the game.
3. Each team controls their robot from another room, each robot has one camera so each team will be able to see the exact location of the robot in the room without being in the room!
4. The game has 2 main phases: Autonomous - Each robot is not being controlled it finds his way by himself, each team has to make sure they have an application that able to control the robot without any human being, autopilot.This phase takes about 30 seconds in each round. The 2nd phase is the main phase, each team player takes control over his robot with the Desktop PC in different ways, our team uses the Xbox 360 Controller to control our bot.
5. The winner is the team that win all rounds!
This is how it's gonna go:
2 x Remote desktop pcs.
2 x Notebooks (Asus eee PC's).
2 x Robots.
2 x Cameras.
2 x Lasers.
2 x Different joysticks.
1 x Server.
Our team is the Red team (go Red team!)
I'm really excited about ending this project and playing it!
I really enjoyed programming and creating the main server which helped me understand new things.
The nBot videos (For pictures scroll down):
Pictures:
Our team Desktop client (click to zoom) - This is where we control the robot remotely using the Xbox 360 controller, the weapons and joystick images are not mine! I only made the UI look like this and the programming.
Some of the server programming! - this is the server VB .net programming I wrote for a few days (there is alot more inside the different regions).
Server Main Window - On this screen you are able to see each team current weapon, number of bullets, team symbol, and final score (for each round), there we are, Team Nemex! (-: Red rules! the weapon images are not mine! I only made the UI and the programming for the server.
The robot client - this application actually the one sending the data to command the robot (the notebook which is being on the robot has the program running to receive data from the desktop PC and convert it to real robot movements), you probably wondering why we need a UI anyway? well we need the UI so other people that watch the robot can see how much health and bullets left (they can also see it on the server).
There is it for now! pictures from the robot itself will be available as soon as we finish the project!
Have a wonderful week!