MiniBloq line following and gripper use

This was an awesome code to mess around with and taught me a lot.

Initially I thought that Sparki could use his ultrasonic sensor to find out if there was an object in the path or not but I found that this then made it difficult for him to continue following the line (especially at corners) as the object would block the light, making the line sensor detect less light and conning Sparki into thinking he was still on the line.

This threw a spanner in my project but actually Sparki had 5, yes 5, line sensors, and so I decided I was willing to lose a bit of accuracy and instead of using the middle sensor to line follow, as this is the one that will be blocked by the object, I used an edge sensor to follow the line, keeping the line on the left or right of Sparki.

Even though this solves the problem, I decided instead to use the line sensors individually with commands for Sparki to pick up an object and drop an object depending on the line sensors readings. This worked really well and was fun to put together and play around with. It also meant that Sparki can pick up more than one object throughout the maze and provides a lot more freedom.

here is the Minibloq generated code that I ended up with:

#include <Sparki.h>

void setup()
{
float threshold = 800;
float lineLeft = 0;
float lineRight = 0;
float edgeRight = 0;
while(true)
{
sparki.servo(0);
lineLeft = sparki.lineLeft();
lineRight = sparki.lineRight();
edgeRight = sparki.edgeRight();
if((edgeRight<threshold))
{
sparki.RGB(0,250,0);
sparki.moveForward(0);
}
else
{
sparki.RGB(250,0,0);
sparki.moveRight(0);
}
if(((edgeRight<threshold)&&(lineRight<threshold)))
{
delay(5000);
sparki.beep(440, 1000);
sparki.RGB(0,0,250);
sparki.gripperClose();
delay(2000);
sparki.gripperStop();
delay(1000);
}
else
{
}
if(((edgeRight<threshold)&&(lineLeft<threshold)))
{
delay(3000);
sparki.gripperOpen();
delay(2000);
sparki.gripperStop();
delay(1000);
}
else
{
}
delay(100);
}
}

void loop()
{
}

and here is a link to a video of Sparki running the completed program :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6y9ITteBcqLSnVidmdFNkZhUU0/view?usp=sharing

let me know what you think 🙂 🙂