Education

Course Project 2008

The project is designed give the students an insight into the issues involved in mapping the solution to a sorting problem, the Dutch National Flag problem, onto a real system. Prior to the sort, a one-dimensional array of coloured elements, each element being one of three colours, are arranged randomly in the array. Following the sort the elements are grouped and ordered by colour. The real system is an array of racks, divided into input racks at one end of the array and output racks the other. Each input rack has a coloured pallet that can be moved to an unoccupied output rack by a Lego forklift robot. Control programs for the robot are constructed using the Mindstorms graphical programming language.

An introductory talk is used to describe the "quick sort" algorithm and demonstrate the programming language. Students then spend four two hour practical sessions building and programming the forklift to move the pallets from a randomly arranged set on the input racks to a sorted and ordered set on the output. Prizes are given for the two best solutions judged on the accuracy of the sort, the precision of the pallet placement and the speed of the sort.

Project in Pictures

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