Part Sorter
The second part of the part sorting is to extend your color sensing machine
into a Lego part sorter that adheres to the following specifications:
- Your device should sort parts according to their color. It
should be able to distinguish at least 3 different colors. The parts
could be Lego pieces, but you can be creative and sort other items
instead, e.g., candy pieces.
- Initially, your device should accept 8 parts in random order
into some sort of storage mechanism. It should also have a number of
bins to sort the parts into (as many as there are different
colors/types of parts).
- Once started, your machine should process one item at a time,
sense its color, and sort it into the appropriate bin. As you prepared for
Monday, the Handy board should also play a different note depending on the
color of the part, and show on the display the current tally of parts
processed. Building the sorting mechanism will be the main challenge.
Something to think about... can you come up with a way of sorting
with fewer motors than bins?
- When all parts are sorted, your machine should stop and report
the final tally.
There are many possibilities for extensions, including handling 4 or 5
colors, or having different shapes in addition to different colors.
For example, you could have "short" and "long" pieces in each of 3
colors, for a total of 6 different parts.
You should be ready to demonstrate your working part sorter by the
beginning of Wednesday's lab. The demonstrations will commence right
after the quiz. We will grade your machine based on effectiveness,
speed, and creativity. Extra points will be awarded for additional
features such as handling more than 3 colors or sorting by color and
shape.