Olha Lee

POE

Moon B7

VEX Project Reflection During the first 3 weeks of the second semester at Global in Principles of Engineering, a project was assigned to the class to complete a challenge from the PLTW activity 3.1.7. The class was divided into groups of about 4- 5 according to strength and exposure to VEX. My groups challenge was to design a robot with VEX parts available that can accurately wind up a specific amount of cable and must be able to be started and stopped with the push of an emergency button. To complete the challenge, several preliminary assignments must have been completed to farther deepen the understanding of the functionality of the ROBOTC software. Before building the robot, a team contract was designed to help understand the strengths and weaknesses of team members and how they can be corrected. My strengths involved assembling the parts and the weaknesses included programming the code of the robot. Then, a sketch was designed to resemble the locations of all the parts that were supposed to be mounted onto the test bed. Before writing the program, pseudo code was written as a draft that served as a guide for the final code. The final code involved, first, a subprogram that was programed as the emergency shutoff button using the bump switch. Then, using the shaft encoder, a sensor value was used to initiate the count at zero which meant that the count would start at zero. We used a while if statement to program the bump switch to initiate the program to stop when the button was pressed and to start when the button was released. Later in the program, another while if statement was used to program the motor to stop spinning when the light sensor value was less than 3000.

Before finalizing the code to produce a robot that carried out the function as stated in the challenge, the group ran into several problems with the code. The biggest problem occurred when the code ran backwards and the parts, such as the bump switch and motor, were initiated at incorrect times. The problem was fixed by reformatting the structure of the code that resulted in the proper function of the code. Other groups were assigned different challenges and ran into several problems from which our group learned from. Such diversity in objectives allowed other groups to branch off of others knowledge and ideas. Our group learned different programming styles and structure from different groups that allowed us to improve the efficiency of our design and program. If more time was allowed to complete the project, the robot could have been more aesthetically pleasing to the eye and it could have been programmed with extra bells and whistles that could make the overall functionality of the robot easier to follow. Overall, our robot completed its mission and ran according to the challenge. This project taught and exposed me to not only how to build a robot but also to programing.