These are pictures taken at the end of the third quarter. The program culminated in a robot competition. All robots were completely autonomous (they ran all by themselves, just turn them on and let them go). The Gateway Home Page.

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Vince Scheib, Matt Kiener, Ryan Andrews, and Bruce Isler made up team 'Sprockets'. We named our robot Deiter.

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1. Front and back wheels have a groove for a rubber band belt giving us 4 wheel drive.
2. Spare rubber band belts are carried already on the axles as instant backup.
3. Disk with holes and an infra red sensor (shaft encoder) let's us determine distance traveled. The program for the robot based all movements on these distance measurements. So when the batteries started to wear down, or when our robot was turned by another robot, we knew it and could correct.
4. Bump sensors let us know if we're touching a wall, or another robot.
5. Bump sensors down here let us know if we've encountered a ramp, or if we're tilted.
6. This is the Handy Board controller. It ran C code and was the 'brain' of the robot.
7. This Bumper was used to push buttons which were receded past a wall (We had to reach over the top of the wall to push the button).
8. This is an infra red beacon. Two of these were located in the course and our robot could determine it's position by 'looking' for the beacons. Our robot could successfully locate it's position from any location in the open areas of the course. (There is a maze section where the walls block line of sight to the beacons, so it didn't work there.)
9. We felt bad being team Sprockets and not using any sprockets. So here they are, purley decorative sprockets on the front wheels.
&. There are numerous things not as visible. There is a light sensor underneath the robot, which let us determine if we were on a white or black surface, and also start the race when we saw a bright light flash. We used two modified servo motors for drive. The frame is made out of erector set pieces. Careful planing made our frame extremely stable, unlike most other teams who had problems with erector set pieces bending, flexing, loosening, &c.

Attitude - I programmed 3 'attitudes' into Dieter. Passive, Aggressive, and Annoying. These determined if Dieter would attack other robots or not. Annoying would blatantly attempt to block the other robot. Aggressive was a 'hit and run' strategy intended to disorient the other robot and then continue on our way. Passive attempted to avoid the other robot and run the face faster.

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This is the beginning third of the course. Robots started in either white or black boxes. (The robot did not know which one it started in, it had to figure that out.) They would have to cross to the opposite side, push a button which was beyond a wall, then move to the maze. The maze involved going up a ramp, then zigzagging through a simple maze. The final portion of the course was another open area. A third robot would run about that area and our robots had to 'catch' it by pushing buttons located on that robot.

Ryan Geiss [friend of mine] is the guy in the bottom right with the reddish hair.

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Ryan Geiss, Paul Gemin, Joe Carter, some girl, some guy. These are good friends of mine.

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Team blahblah consisted of some girl, some guy, Julie McNeil, and Ryan Geiss.

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Team Vector was some guy, Paul Gemin, Joe Carter, some guy.

Gateway was fun. I enjoyed it considerably. Yay gateway.