CS148 Labs

Vehicles Lab Checkpoint: In lab the week beginning February 26, 1996 Due: In lab the week beginning March 4, 1996

For this assignment you will be required to implement two Braitenberg vehicles on your robot in Rex. You should implement the following two vehicles:

Love: vehicle 3a
Instincts: vehicle 4a

Your "Love" vehicle should approach a lamp and stop a reasonable distance away from it. The "Instincts" vehicle should, if at all possible, orbit a lamp.

Doing this assignment will mean running your robots with the main boards attached. Make sure that the boards are fixed to the robot properly and that the do not rattle or fall off. You will also be using two light sensors to use for this assignment. It is up to you to decide how to locate and use these on your robot for the best results.

See the how-to handout for details on how to use Rex with a real robot and how to download your Rex-made machine onto your robot. The grading will be based on the overall performance of the robot and on the lab reports.

What to turn in

You will have to demo your robot during your section. Bring the robot with the "love" machine already installed (you can install the other one after you demonstrate the first). Each group should also turn in one electronic copy of the code for both machines (in one file). To do this, use the command:

handin vehicles filename

Everyone should write up a lab report for this assignment, describing the expected and observed behaviour of the robot, something about the design of the control code, and an analysis of the behaviour. This analysis should include things like which conditions the robot will work under (and which will cause it to fail), rationale for choosing any thresholds you have set, and what effect changing these might have, how your implementation differs from Braitenberg's description, etc.

Bill Smart