Programming - Hunter

So we got wind of signs of our first taste of programming. James introduced us to the idea of creating a new chess piece where we'd decide the name, movement style and capabilities in groups of three. So to mix it up a little I got in a group with Jack again but this time with Ron. So after some brainstorming and discussion we came down to the idea of the hunter.

This guy basically embodies everything that is 'the' hunter. Basically It can move left, right or forward one square. But because of it's personality once it spots a prey it'll never back away meaning it can't go backwards. But having natural born skill with the bow and arrow this gives it the capability of attacking any piece to squares to the left, right or front. However, should there be free space in a one square radius of a defeated piece it jumps to the spot to always keep two moves ahead of everyone else. A simple personality and simple movement. Or at least we thought.

Now came the reasoning for our creative design from a quick brief by James. The aim was to place our robot that replicated the idea of our hunter in a square. Give it a fifteen second wait time before it began and we battle it out and compete with the fellow robots. The aim was to get out as far away from the box as possible without getting stuck. First time around we didn't get anywhere and just got caught in a huge mess with fellow robots. Then came round two, the bout of the losing robots. And even though we only moved mere centimeters from the square we won which came to a great surprise. This was because the other robots got stuck by either walls or other robots while our one just spun in a circle. Not the original plan but it worked wonders.

So basically we got our first real taste of programming from the wonderful invention of the NXT robots meant for ages 10+...
Now came the real challenge and the second task. With another quick briefing we were now placed with the task of getting the robot to travel from the entrance of the Creative technologies entrance through one sliding door and all the way to the main office. Following a taped line to make the process a little easier and the aim was to either knock on the door with our robot or make the robot say something. Now the excitement really settled in. At first anyways.

We got straight into the building together and it started to become apparent that it wasn't going to be so easy. The time consumed to construct the robot was the real limitation but when the time came down to it we gave it a few trial runs and it made it out and right before the main office's door. So we thought we could at least pull something off and not look that bad while doing so. However, it only managed to get that far through pure programming as the robot had faulty sensors and estimation wise and time wise we did pretty well.. Until the real show. Despite our previous successes the robot gave out and got stuck right on the second door only just passing the sliding door, not the best result.. But, a result none the less. So this was our first but not the last taste of NXT robots.