Thursday, the girls worked together to figure out how to square their robot to a black line on the field. This is useful for orienting the robot again after going a long distance or turning.
They have a color sensor associated with each drive wheel on their test robot. Their strategy is to move forward until the first light sensor sees the black line and stop the wheel on that side. The other wheel keeps moving until its sensor also sees the black line. Because the first wheel may have moved a bit while waiting for the second wheel to align, they repeat this strategy two more times — first moving to the white line adjacent to the black line, and then moving back to the black line again. It’s not perfect, but pretty good.
One group of girls programmed the Align routine, another group worked on prototyping attachments, and a third group brainstormed project topics. About halfway through the meeting, groups two and three swapped.
All-in-all it was a very productive day and the girls had fun.