ROBOTICS

GOALS:

This activity had a ultimate goal, that was to test and compare the accuracy between man-hand measurement and electronically-measured measurement. This was executed through a different set of experiments that lead to a final calculation of the margin of error between the computer and the human results.

How was it done:

The first step was connecting the robot that we used for the experiment to the computer through a USB port and configuring it with a program that would run it and take the measurements electronically. On the other side, my group and I used rulers to take the measurements manually. From, a straight line the robot was powered an travel a given distances with a given power. The time was the non-variable factor of the experiment and kept constant at 1 seconds. The  robot started from a point to another point on a straight axis and the distance was measured with a ruler and by the computer. The same procedure was repeated 3 times using different motor powers.

Results:

Conclusion:

By the end of the experiment, we noticed the proximity between our measurements and the computer’s was very big, proving that our margins of error were limited. Factors such as human error and frictions played a role in the margins of error but at different levels. Furthermore, the robot had a tendency to move a little bit backward after stoping and that tendency increased as we increased the motor’s power.