CHALLENGE 5: CLEANFIE

 

THE CLEANING ROBOT CHALLENGE

This time, little Alfie is on his way to becoming Mr Clean, because this challenge is about the infamous task many hate, of course, it's about cleaning!

Here are the rules our teachers gave us:

Design, create and program a robot that is capable of completely clearing an area full of garbage.

ELEMENTS:
We will use three motors, a color sensor and a button to start the program.

RULES:
We have 2 minutes to manage to eliminate all the objects from the bounded area.
The number of objects that he manages to remove will be counted.
The best time to finish the process will count in the event of a tie with the number of pieces moved out of the zone.

So, those are our rules, we hope we continue our victory streak and our amazing success in the previous challenge.😎😎😎

We are really hopeful and positive about this, as we trust little Alfie more than ever.

19/01

WE DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!

Well, nothing worth it because it was the first day and we were still interiorising our fabulous and so unexpected winning.

We tried starting the programme but we realised that we had to build our robot first to mesure the motor's rotations.

But, even though we did nothing useful for the robot, every group performed an exposition about their blogs.

None of them was super amazing, but ours at least was ok, it didn't go so bad.

21/01

Now it's time to really focus on our little champion, Alfie the master soul ripper, 

well it gets built down whenever it spins but it doesn't matter.

We started building the medium motor mechanism and it went like clockwork, 

everything effective and smooooooth as silk.

We started the prototype of the gripper and well... well, well.

The class is nearly over and we will continue the next day.                                                                                                             

24/01

ALFIE IS DEAD AND WE HAVE KILLED IT!!! 

Now, a new robot is born, you can call it Cleanfie, the master of the neat and the savior of the filth. 

We went for all with the gripper and we are so close to achieve the ultimate gripper.

We also started working on the program adding a light/colour sensor to our robot.

This is the board that our Cleanfie has to go through, it has to move the cubes and take them out of the blue zoned
Little Cleanfie will be a wonderful cleaner!!!!!!

26/01

We are being so slow in this challenge and we need to start working more quickly if we want to arrive to the day of the challenge with all done.

We have to take over this right now, we said:

TODAY THE GRIPPER HAS TO BE DONE!!

And that's how today's class went.

We built one side of the gripper, but it was very tall and didn't drag the cubes. It also made the robot wider and it wasn't legal for the challenge.

We will tell you on the next day how we are going to solve this problem.

28/01

In this class, we solved the majority of problems we had with the gripper.

For instance, we made a gripper that doesn't touch the wheels and also pushes the cubes out of the blue zone, so it's safe to say that the challenge is going really well.

We hope it keeps going well as always.

And now, here is a picture of our half-built gripper, bceause, we just had the time to build half of it, the next day, we plan to copy it, and as that, we'll have a super cool and functioning gripper.

31/01

Tachan, tachaaaan!!

Our robot is doooooooone.

HURRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

We copied the other side of the gripper while we were doing the program. We decided that it would be better for our robot to remove the colour sensor, so the program will be easier and there will be less probability for it to fail.

Now we just have to know the degrees that our medium motor has to rotate to open and close the gripper and put it on our program, and that's it!

Our final program!

Tell us about what you expect for our robot on the challenge day!

02/02

The day has come, and right now, at the exact moment, we still don't know our position in this challenge, but, what we know so far, is that we didn't win -we'll tell you the details later-

We will find out about our position in a few minutes, right before the class ends.

We know now, we are thirds!!!!!!!

At least we're not the last iones, and we're so glad about it because, regardless of what we said, we didn't have much hope in Cleanfie, as the 25 minutes this teacher left us to make last-minute changes have been a little stressing and overwhelming, however, the challenge hasn't been that bad.

Cleanfie looking good😎😎😎

 Honestly, we're so glad this turned out like this.

 And now, the important stuff, the interesting stuff,   what we want to gossip about, the details.

 The class began with all of us being hopeful   about the challenge,and, as we were so hopeful,   our motivation was off limits, we were eager to   win this.

 But, turns out, our program started to fail and our   robot did't push the wheels, it got stuck or   started to nonsensely spin.

 We managed to improve our program until it   worked well, but new problems appeared when   our teacher showed us the 3 circuits we had to   complete, besides, we only had one chance per   circuit to do it, when we usually have two or three   chances every challenge, and a testing round!😓

This time, it was serious.

Anyway, we were able to solve almost everything before the challenge started we were just in time, but in the 3rd round -the 3rd circuit- little Cleanfie always

 got stuck, but as we wewren't as motivated as when we started the class and the other groups weren't being very succesful with the ciurcuits, we all unconsciously thought one thing: "hey, it's actually okay not to win, our robot is efficient and we've achieved to make it work well."

With that mindset, we were being less ambitious than before, but we were calmer and happier with our work.

In the end, Cleanfie went through the all circuits flawlessly, except for the third one, that was something we expected.

The robot managed to move eight cubes out of the blue zone, and it would have moved twelve if Cleanfie hadn't got stuck.

We're so proud of our robot, and it wasn't the quickest one, because it took around 9 seconds to move the cubes each round -if Cleanfie had taken less time we would've been in the second place- and, as we said, we are so proud of our robot.

We hope we can build a robot as good as this one in the next challenge!!!!!

And now, some pictures and videos of Cleanfie! See you in the next challenge!

Leave a comment and tell us what you think!