End course project description

Goal:
We want to construct a interactive robot game, inpired by the Atari Pong from 1972.

Plan:
The goal of the project is to present a interactive Pong game consisting of three NXTs. One NXT should model the Pong ball, the other two should represent the bats on either side of the playing field.
One bat should be controlable by a human player, the other bat and the ball should be autonomous.

Requirements:

• Environment:
  1. We want to control the environment of the robots in the sense that the playing field should be delimitted by a outer boundary consisting of walls or other horisontal surfaces.
• Human controlled bat:
  1. It must be possible for a human player to control one of the bats. This should be enabled by bluetooth either via laptop or cellphone.
  2. It should be adequate to use a single engine to control the movement of the bat, as it will only move along one axis.
• Ball:
  1. It should be able to calculate an angle of reflection upon collision with a barrier or a bat. This implies an awareness on the balls part about the present course and on which side it collided with the barrier.
     • Awareness of present course should be established by mounting a compass.
     • Collision detection might be established by use of touch sensors on the chassis of the ball.
     • If it is not possible using touch sensors to detect the barrier, it might be using lightsensors to measure color variations on the floor.
  2. The ball should be mounted with two engines, given that the it should be able to make changes to its course.
• Autonomus bat:
  1. The autonomus bat must be able to place itself relative to the ball.
     • Test must be made to see if this is possible using light sensors and a form of Braitenberg vehicles.
     • If it is not possible using light sensors, instead it might be using a camera.
  2. It should be adequate to use a single engine to control the movement of the bat, as it will only move along one axis.