DAY 1.

To begin this lab, we were asked to break into groups and follow a set of instructions to assemble what looked like a car but was actually a robot (shown below) . The pieces resembled Lego pieces (maybe this is why its called Lego Mindstorm?) and although they were quite small, they fit into each other with ease. Other than an occasional piece falling to the floor, the assembly was quite easy.

CAR ROBOT

Then, we were to connect the USB wire to the computer which was running a computer simulation program. This allowed us to key in data, command the robot (hence-forth called car-bot) and download them straight to it.  For the first day, we learned how to command our car-bots to go forward. My teammate and I were feeling quite ambitious so we went ahead and had our car-bot move backwards, and even in circles.

DAY 2

We opened up the programmed the car robots that we built last week using Lab View (shown above)
We gave them a few computer commands to mobilize them. We measured the distance (hand and computer calculated), they travel at different power levels and how many times the wheels rotated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chart above shows our records of all three trials that we performed. Since we kept the time standard, the dependent variable was the Power Level.

As we were working on the second and third trial, my group members and I noticed that the time indicated on the screen was not accurate. We had assumed that the time given indicated the amount if time it took the car-bot to move from distance A to distance B but instead, we found out that the time was actually the break time, the time it waited BEFORE it moved. The actual time was about twice the time of what we originally calculated.