EEBug: An Electronic Toy Car

As a first-year coursework at university, students were asked to build autonomous robots that would follow a track marked in fading greyscale, with extra functions gaining extra marks.

We were grouped into teams of 3, with the roles of Leader, Treasurer and Secretary to fill. I was selected for the role of Leader by my team. The technical design of the robot was split equally among all members. Regarding other tasks, I was in charge of the over-arching project plan, milestones, and deadlines.

The teams were given a design brief with strict specifications, such as an upper bound of £8 on spending, maximum two sensors and no more than 8 pins on microprocessors. My team made the choice of building a fully digital robot, so a lot of sofware was involved in our design.

Approximately a month into the project, we submitted a management report outlining our progress so far and our plans for the rest of the year. Towards the end of project, we submitted a design report detailing our methodogies and justifying our design choices throughout the work. In the end, we were one of only 3 groups who had successfully built a fully analogue line-follower.