🤖 Pathfinding Robot
- 1 min 
It knows the way... sort of.
Wall-E 2.0 is a semi-autonomous robot optimized to navigate without any assistance or help. This particular challenge was slapped a tasty 20% for a 300-level Cognitive Systems course which seemed like free real estate. How difficult could designing a pathfinding algorithm be?
Despite being provided only two ultrasonic sensors, the algorithm I wrote to pathfind - equipped on the front and left side of the robot respectively - was theoretically sound. However, realizing their functionality physically was a nightmare. In one instance, I found out the sensor was configured with such a low refresh rate the robot would always act on information at least 2 seconds in the past. The sensors failed to register if they were positioned too far from the mazes’ walls as well.
Whatever it cost to design the pathfinding algorithm, hardware debugging took five times the effort. It’s safe to say I won’t be making a shift to hardware engineering anytime soon.