Task analysis

As we do for each chapter, let’s review what we are aiming to accomplish. We will be driving the robot around the house, looking for toys. Once we have a toy, we will take that toy to the toy box and put it away by dropping it into the toy box. Then, the robot will go look for more toys. Along the way, we need to avoid obstacles and hazards, which include a set of stairs going downward that would definitely damage the robot.

Note

I used a baby gate to cover the stairs for the first part of testing and put pillows on the stairs for the second part. There is no need to bounce the robot down the stairs while it is still learning.

We are going to start with the assumption that nothing in this task list requires the robot to know where it is. Is that true? We need to find the toy box – that is important. Can we find the toy box without knowing where it is? The answer is, of course, that the robot can just search for the toy box using its camera until...