Active Project Members: David Sharp, Josh Bonner, Ryan Clark, Alex Shaw
Overview
UPDATE: This web page is way out of date. Deal with it. "Fire Marshal
Bill" has become the 2003 volleyball robot. Here's an updated pic.
The Trinity College Firefighting
Competition is one of the most well known
robot competitions. The goal of the competition is to have a robot search
through a model warehouse containing five rooms, one of which contains a burning candle, and extinguish the candle in the quickest time. Depending on how
autonomous the robot is, the time may be reduced by certain factors. Our goal
as a club is to develop a robot that is able to initially find a candle and
extinguish it, then improve upon the autonomous level of the robot.
Fire Marshall Bill as of 3 April 2002
Updates
5 April 2002
The sonar sweeper and flame detector have been integrated into Bill. At
this point it is obvious that we will not be able to enter this year's
competition, but we will definitely enter next year if we can get funding
to send someone to Connecticut (and if we believe our robot will make
other robots afraid). The assembly coding will continue, although
it is possible that we will want to experiment with our original idea
of linking to a more powerful computer and just using the AVR as a sensor
interface. The possibilites are endless.
25 February 2002
Fire Marshall Bill is a functional robot. At this point, the AVR is still
in the process of being programmed, but Dave ran a demo tonight to prove
that the robot was functional. Sonar and other sensors should be shipped
soon, so we will be able to add those to the base robot. It's coming along!
24 January 2002
The key parts of the robot have arrived. Over the next few weeks each individual
group will work on its own part. Listed above are the groups, members of each
group, and the group leaders.
17 November 2001
Presently we are in the primary stages of the project. We have had a meeting
where we discussed the initial outline of the project, but we will have
one or two additional meetings to discuss the rules and the roles of the groups
in the project.
There are essentially three groups that will work on different aspects of the
project: Core Robot, Communications, and Computer Software. The Core Robot
group will develop the body of the robot, the motor control, low level
microcontroller interface, and add any additional sensors. The Computer
Software group will write all of the high level programs needed to make the
robot autonomous. The Communications group will tie both ends together and make
certain the robot can talk with the programs and vice versa. Later, the group
will work on developing the wireless communication.