SE 423 Final Project

The final project had two main parts, path planning and obstacle avoidance, and golf ball retrieval. In order to accomplish the first part of the final project, our group utilized the A-star algorithm to avoid obstacles and path plan around them to designated waypoints in the course. To this end, we used the gyroscope and the camera system in the lab to keep track of the robot's position and angle with respect to the world coordinate system. This is what allowed us to tell the robot to go to certain coordinates in the course using the A-star algorithm and have it know where it is in the course. In order to avoid any obstacles that may be in the path, we used the LiDAR system on the robot. Using 11 different LiDAR samples, we told the robot to mark an obstacle on the course if any of those samples were closer than 6 feet away from the robot. If an obstacle was found, the robot would run the A-star algorithm again in case the obstacle was in its original path. To make sure that we don't accidentally run into obstacles, we also made sure the robot would slow down if the LiDAR detected something in front of the robot that was less than 1.3 feet away. In order to collect golf balls, we utilized the OpenMV camera that was mounted on the robot. We developed thresholds on the camera so that it would only react to the colors orange or purple. If orange or purple are seen, and the area around the centroid of said orange or purple is greater than our set threshold, the robot will follow that color and collect it using the gripper attached to the robot. To make sure we search the whole course for as many golf balls as possible we added a couple of extra waypoints that our robot would go to so that we can find additional golf balls. Every time the robot collects a ball it logs the coordinates and plots in on LabVIEW as well. Once Our robot has hit all of our waypoints and collected golf balls along the way, it drives to drop-off points, and once it passes a certain X and Y coordinate it releases the balls.