Background
The Western Engineering Competition (WEC) is an annual competition held in Western Canada. Engineering students, from across the western half of the country, meet and compete in a multitude of categories, such as re-engineering and senior design. I was part of the team representing the University of Victoria in senior design for the 2014 competition. The senior design category was based around using Vex robotics to make and program a robot to complete a challenge.
The Challenge
The challenge was to make a robot that could drive up to shelves and deliver blocks onto them. Each team had 6 blocks to deliver and was awarded 3 points for each block delivered to the top shelf, 2 points for the second shelf and 1 point for the floor underneath the shelves. There was a line of tape from the loading area to the shelves. The teams were given four hours to complete the design.
My Role
My role was to program the robot in C. To program the robot, I had to create its state machine. The robot's state machine had to interface with two motors and several color sensors, which were used to follow the line of tape to the shelves.
Results
My team's design successfully completed the challenge delivering all six blocks to the top shelf.