Objectives & Outcomes
With this exercise, we wanted to find a balance between some sort of choreographed motion and randomness. We decided to use all 4 motors in pairs of two wherein the diagonal motors are pairs. One pair of motors essentially act as “players” that rotate to pass a ball back and forth to each other. The other pair of motors have gate like structures attached to them that open and close when the ball gets close, allowing it to pass through. This is done using distance sensors. We were curious to see how well the ball can oscillate back and forth before getting stuck somewhere. When we actually executed our simulation, however, while we were successful with the movement of the players, we ran into many difficulties programming the gates to open when they sensed the ball, and were thus unsuccessful with this portion. We are hoping to sort out the difficulties with coordinating the motors, since they are crucial for the real-life version of this project. Additionally, we discovered that adding randomness to the players’ motion (the intervals between player movements are random) did add a lifelike character to them, however they did not end up passing the ball nearly as often as we would have liked. In the upcoming week, we would figure out more optimal angles to program the players to travel to, so that they are more easily able to pass the ball.