About

Self.solve is a self-solving, variable maze that expands on the traditional ball-on-plate controls problem. Users can create their own custom mazes and with the press of a button, the table will come to life and solve the maze.

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Concept

Self.solve features a sleek mechanical design that allows for an easily adjustable maze with the placement and movement of walls. The ball can then be placed in any square to start. The system is operated using a laptop running the software LabVIEW and a National Instruments MyRIO. Once begun, the mounted camera captures and tracks the current ball position while detecting the wall locations. This information is sent to code that runs the A* Maze Solving Algorithm to determine the real-time best path for the ball to take to get to the end of the maze. This optimized path is further translated into motor commands to drive the stepper motors which in turn move the ball along the path. The whole process features a continual feedback control system with a graphical user interface that shows the ball's current position and trajectory along with the motor commands.

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Motivation:

• To study and learn about complex engineering principles:

  • Multi-tasking software

  • Real-time control systems

  • Motor and camera software

  • Image manipulation and tracking