Robot Assignment 6: Drawing a Map

This is your final robot/garment assignment. You will remote control your robot to walk a path, and then draw the path that you walked on the monitor.

Your Task

Detailed specifications are as follows:

The TAs will ask you to remote control your robot/garment-wearing partner to walk a path (just like in the first assignment).
While you are walking the path, your program should store the route that you walked. You can assume that your robot/partner starts off facing North, and all left/right turns are 90 degrees, so the direction of travel is always along one of the cardinal compass directions (North, East, South, West).
At the end of the path, you will signal to your robot/partner that you are done.
Your program should then display the path on the monitor. You have three choices:

Level 1: List display. For this level, just display a list of the steps "walked" by your robot. For example, the output of your program might look like this:
```
Walked East for 0.5 meter
Turned Right
Walked South for 1 meter
Turned Left 
...
```
Level 2 (20 extra points on top of Level 1): Text Mapping of Robot Path. For this level, your program should display, in addition to the list of steps, the path of the robot. Paths going North/South should be displayed using the | character, paths going East should be displayed using the > character, and paths going West using the < character. For example, your path might look like this:
```
>>>
  |
  |
  |
  |
  |
```
Note that the number of characters printed out should be somewhat proportional to the distance travelled.

(Hint: you might wish to use a 2-D array to represent the "floor", and fill up the cells if they have been "stepped on" by your robot/partner.)

Level 3 (10 extra points on top of Level 2): Graphical Mapping of Robot Path. For this level, you will display, in addition to what is required in Level 2, the path of the robot using the graphics.py package that we learned in class. I deliberately leave this open-ended, you are free to display this in whatever way you choose.

Freebies and Hints

Those of you who are working on robots have often pointed out that robots have difficulty making correct right turns and walking straight. Since we're not testing you on your mechanical ability to build a robot, we're going to allow you to correct your robot's path manually if needed. But you may only correct the robot (that is, if it fails to turn the whole 90 degrees, you may correct the angle, or you may push it back on course if it's moving in a curved line). You may not help it.
The assignment requires that your program somehow keeps track of the distance walked by your robot/partner. The way to do this is to measure the length of time elapsed since the robot/partner started walking (ok, it's not a very accurate measure, but it's good enough). The Python time module lets us do this:
```
startTime = time.clock()
    ... do something
elapsedTime = (time.clock() - startTime)
```
Remember to import time in your program.

Those of you who're working on UNIX/Mac systems will find that time.clock() does not work as well on those systems as it does on Windows. Use time.time() instead, but remember that when you will be demoing your system on the school's Windows computers!)

Specifications, Deadline and Evaluation

Your program should be called MapBot.py.

Together with your program, we're going to request that you hand in a brief report describing your work in English. This report should not be more than one page long, and it should include the following parts:

Your algorithm (in English, obviously)
How you tested your program at home (or in the lab)
What weak points do you think your program has, or where you think that your program might fail.

Your report should be titled "Robot6Report.pdf", be in pdf format, have your names and studentIDs in it, and be handed in with the program to WebCT.

Your program will be evaluated in two ways: through your code, and also through a demonstration. Therefore, you will need to hand in your program to WebCT, as well as to demonstrate it to the TA.

The deadline for handing in the code is 07:00, Thursday December 3rd, 2009. No late submissions are allowed. The person in the group with the smallest studentID should hand in the code. If we get multiple submissions in the group, we'll just pick the one with the smallest studentID and ignore the rest.

For the demonstration, you are to sign up for a time slot. During the demonstration, you will first demo your program running to your TA. He will watch your program do its task, and then will ask you some questions about your program. He might also choose to do a "wire-pull test" -- which is, the TA will make some changes to your code when you're not looking. Then you will have to debug your program in front of him.

Bear in mind that the TA can ask anybody in your group to do the demo, or to debug the program. He/she also has the right to ask the rest of the groupmates to leave the room while the program is being demoed. Therefore, everybody needs to be present for the demo.