Exercise: Your First 3pi Program

Objective

Get started in experimenting with a mobile robot, using Pololu 3pi Robot platform: "a complete, high-performance mobile platform featuring two micro metal gearmotors, five reflectance sensors, an 8×2 character LCD, a buzzer, and three user pushbuttons, all connected to a C-programmable ATmega328 microcontroller." In this excercise, we will set-up the Arduino IDE for work with the 3pi, and load a few different pieces of existing example code.

Steps and observations

1. Get the necessary hardware for working with the 3pi robot:
   1. 3pi Robot
   2. Pololu AVR Programmer
2. Get the necessary software for working with the 3pi robot:
   1. Arduino IDE
   2. Pololu AVR C/C++ Library
3. Load a line-following program onto the 3pi, create a "maze", test algorithm by experimenting with several different maze designs
4. Tweak the code for the line-following program to create behaviors that are different than the original; consider subjective and affective descriptions like "nervous", "shy", "hasty", or "drunk" as guides for how to modify the existing program to give the impression of a more personified robot.

Comments

Other Files

1. Pololu 3pi Rbot User's Guide
2. Pololu AVR Programming Guide
3. Videos of 3pi robot projects