106CR

Prototype solution – screen shots of the program demo to a client group and a brief report of client group feedback

We showed a prototype of the robot to another group to get feedback and for them to evaluate the work we had done so far. The version of the robot we showed them had a basic design of the arena and showed how the robots travelled around the arena.

As you can see in the demonstration it included the functionality of the traffic lights and how the robots travel over the crossings in the arena. The robots also detect the objects in each corner of the arena and avoid them, whilst travelling through the arena in a clockwise direction.

The feedback we got suggested that the program was a good base, although random movement of the robots would increase the complexity if we wished to add this as a feature. The arena was well laid out, but we intend to add some graphics to make the crossings look more realistic.

We also intend to add features such as music as the program runs, and the option for the user to change the speed of each robot, a pause button to stop the movement of the robots and a timer in the GUI, to show how long the program has been running and an initial starting screen. All of these changes will give the user more control over the program.

Below is shown the changes made to the program after the initial prototype.

Above is shown the starting screen that appears once the user runs the program. We added this feature as it allowed the user to be able to start the program when they were ready. Also, the speed sliders and the timer are shown at the bottom of the console window. The speed sliders enable the user to set the speeds of both robots, and the timer begins once the user hits space to start.

As displayed above, more graphical images were added to the arena and the pause button is now visible.