Ciberlandia ("Cyberland") - Robotic Heliostats (2016)

[DJuego]

Happy New Year!

I am happy that Gears is still alive and adding support for the new pybricks! :-) Thank you, @QuirkyCort!

Here I am for a new installment of "adventures in Cyberland". :-D

In a previous "post" I explained what "Ciberlandia" was. Now I will introduce the theme we are presenting in the 2016 edition. For this edition we were inspired by the Norwegian village of Rjukan. This video explains (in English) very well what caught our attention.

In a nutshell, the "Ciberlandia" team decided to "recreate" our own Rjukan village by applying robotics! :-D Of course we take quite a bit of artistic (and no-artistic) license...

We designed two types of robotic units with Lego EV3.

A static unit for high school students that we called a robotic heliostat. Here is the explanation of what a heliostat is.

The robotic unit was capable of orienting a small mirror with vertical movements and turns. A detail that can be seen in the image are the two contact sensors that were used to calibrate the heliostat in a starting position.

An essential sensor in the robotic heliostat is the motor tachometers. Very briefly, the dominant approach consisted of systematically "scanning" the reflection field looking to maximize the light captured by the arduino's light sensor (See below).

A mobile unit for elementary school students, equipped with a very strong clamp to pick up cans that "emulated" energy batteries.

The illustration shows the high clamp torque achieved by means of a sequence of gears. As a result, the gripper was very strong but very slow. :-) :-P In retrospect not so much force was needed!

Among other things, loading and unloading movements were rehearsed and programmed by the students. This was the last time (so far) that we used the LEGO block programming language.

The challenge had two phases.

In the first phase, the high school teams had to develop a program that would make their heliostat redirect sunlight (actually light from powerful spotlights that simulated the sun) to specific areas on the stage. To do this, the EV3 unit of the heliostat received information from an arduino board located in the area of interest and equipped with a light sensor.

The illustration shows the village immersed in the darkness of the valley. The sunlight only reaches the mountain range where the robotic heliostats are located.

In the second phase, the mobile primary units must transport the batteries supposedly charged by solar energy in the first phase to the center of the village. Basically it has to perform several simple operations (load the battery, follow the line, unload the battery,...).

Battery load operation. The "battery charging station" is clearly visible in the picture. On the roof is the arduino board with the light sensor.

The main challenge is to respect the traffic lights in the center of the town center, which communicates with the mobile units via Bluetooth.

In the background can be seen the projected main window of the server application that managed the two traffic lights in the center of town.

The center of town (CyberRjukan) can be a busy place.

Oops, there seems to be a bit of chaos around here.

DJuego

NOTE: The persons portrayed in the photographs (and/or their legal guardians) gave their prior written consent for their use in publicizing this project.

[QuirkyCort]

Thanks for sharing! That looks like a great event.