As a late joiner to the SCI 184 A class, I missed the initial Robotic Car Setup. Luckily, we had a second class to work with them. The first thing I learned, was how badly Suffolk’s computers are in need of tune-up. There were three of us in our group, and sadly none of our computers worked. After moving seats, we finally found a computer that while incredibly slow, managed to start up and run the program. The program itself was incredibly confusing, and our car didn’t seem to work, but luckily our professor, Dr. Shatz, came to the rescue and got us up and moving. (Literally.) Our first goal was for the car to move in a circle with a 2 foot radius. It seemed easy enough in theory. But after multiple attempts, we finally realized as we tried to alter the rotation it wasn’t properly downloading onto our robot. Finally we were able to fix the problem and move on with the rest of the class.
Our next goal was to measure the distance the car moved forward using the complicated program pictured above. Luckily, our group had pretty accurate readings with this, and our results were as close to perfect as they could be! We learned that the faster the car moved the greater margin of error that occurred. This was caused by the friction in air that pushed back against the car when it stopped, sometimes causing it to bounce back.
I personally found this lab really interesting. Though I struggled to understand the computer program, I had a much better understanding of motion, and really liked how different this lab was from others offered at Suffolk.
Good call on the images! Although you acknowledged your group’s issues, you turned around and mentioned how everything was solved.