My Beginning Autonomous Robot Challenges
 

Hi guys!

In an effort to liven up this forum since I am interested in this even more than I am in RC, here are a few beginning autonomous robot challenges (in the programming sense. Hardwarewise, these are easy) that I have seen or come up with, all of which can be solved in as little as $50 - $100 worth in reusable parts.

Just starting:

1) Build a robot that can balance on two wheels. (Unlike the Segway, there is an approach that can be done in around 5-10 lines of code and two sensors.)

2) Find a path from a given starting point to a light source

3) Follow a line of electrical tape on the floor

4) This is really a hardware question: identify between a blue cup and a green cup (do not use a camera.)

Harder:

5) Given a robot with a starting location, make a map of the walls of the room, somewhat accurately. (To make one accurately, it would involve complex filtering algorithms.)

6) Given a perfect map of an unobstructed room, find the robot's location at all times.

7) Build a robot that has a claw/gripper that is able to learn to pick up different delicate objects (things easily crushable by the gripper) without crushing them. (You can give the robot multiple chances on an object before it learns to pick it up, but you cannot hard code the pressure of the gripper.)

Good luck and post your successes, ideas, or questions here.