Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The second meetings of my Introduction to Robotics classes for the sixth week of the third term saw them start on their second project, using the standard wall hugger or maze traversal program and design that was part of the software training on an actual maze, the one made by the people who took the same course last year.

The only thing they had to do was change the Rover Robot design to fit the narrower corridors of the Styrofoam maze (less than a foot across – the corridors not the whole width of the maze).

The maze itself was on a five foot by five foot soccer field first bought by the school for the robot soccer competitions (I know how long someone has been using the keywords “robot soccer” to look for this chronicle. Now it will show up.)

The school has two other fields, one three by three feet and another seven feet by seven, the latter only recently having been moved out of either the third or the fourth floor of the central lobby and moved to the work area beside what is going to be the new engineering labs.

The only rules for the competition, I told the students, is that I will be placing the robots in the same starting space, and they will be given fifteen minutes to get to one of the two exits.

The one with the shortest time wins. If they do not reach the exit to the maze at the end of fifteen minutes, they would be rated according to how many “squares” they have moved from the original point.

It was also not allowed to destroy the masking tape attached walls of the maze.

I had one volunteer from each group clean up the dust covered maze (it had not been touched for one whole year after all) and to reinforce the walls, for which some of the masking tape – using the standard one inch width roll – was already starting to peel.

One of their main problems is how to get out of the dead ends, because there is no room for the robot to turn around and therefore it must be able to detect being enclosed on the left, right and front to reverse direction.

Session 997 is broke the wall. Class dismissed.