Botting the way - 3Pi Intro (1)

Hey there! In a perhaps more definitive revival of our blog, I'm presenting my current project - or, more accuratelly, parts of it.

A simple 3pi, with no addons.

Having been working with a little robot "3pi", by pololu, I've decided to use one for a game. The idea is to create a somewhat sentient bot that can respond to a player's input. However, let us not get ahead of ourselves! First, the basics: programming a simple 3pi to perform a series of very simple tasks. First, we're looking at following a track consisting of black lines in a white space.

A 3pi with no extensions has 5 light sensors: They detect the amount of light being reflected. We're not yet able to sense anything like location (WHERE on a track am I? North, south?), accept our player's input (No wifi/bluetooth communication), or read images or sound (we lack cameras or sound input). We can, however, do the most important thing to start with: Moving!

With that in mind, our goal is to make a 3PI follow a black line in a white field. This is easier to avoid sensor errors, since those are poar opposites in terms of reflected light. The idea is simple: to guide our little friend through his journey!

We'll check how next time.