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Difficulty: Hard
Expected Duration: Couple of Days
Description
iRobot Create is a hobbyist robot based on iRobot's popular Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner (but without the vacuum!).
Sun SPOT is a small, wireless sensor node that can be built into larger projects (such as robots) that need sensing and reporting functions.
This activity uses the Sun SPOT Software Development Kit (SDK) with Robot Emulation to allow you to program a Sun SPOT to control the iRobot Create. In this activity, you will program the robot to solve a maze. Maze solving is a pretty common activity in robotics clubs and competitions, so if you want to practice, this is a good place to get a head start on your competition!
Basic Steps
- You will need the Sun SPOT Software Development Kit (SDK) and Robotics Emulation Environment in order to do this activity. If you already installed these when doing another activity, you can skip to the next step. Otherwise, visit the Sun SPOT Robotics Emulator Tutorial page. Follow the instructions on the page to download and install the basic Sun SPOT Software Development Kit (SDK), and then update it to the latest developer preview SDK, which includes the robot emulator. Be sure to install the correct software for your computer platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux).
- Click the following link to start the Sun SPOT Manager Tool, and then click the Solarium tab on the Manager Tool. On the Solarium tab, you should see a Solarium button that will start Solarium, the Robot emulation window. Click it to start Solarium. When Solarium starts, look under the View menu, and make sure both My Robot View and SPOT View are checked.
- At the bottom of the Solarium window, you will see a Display selection allowing you to choose Empty room, Maze, or Obstacle course. Select Maze. Your main window view will change to a maze. You may need to use the zoom in/out controls to see the entire maze in the window.
- Click the Add robot button near the bottom right of the Solarium window. A new robot should appear at the start of the maze, and a SPOT device should appear in the SPOT view.
- Write your code to solve the maze, deploy the code as a MIDlet bundle into the emulatedSPOT, and run the program to solve the maze. If you don't understand how to do this, there are introductory Sun SPOT and Java Robotics activities that cover this in detail, you might want to do those first.
- When you are finished, submit your code to this activity. Optionally, if you know how to capture a video from your computer screen, upload a video of your robot solving the maze, and upload that, too!