WiFi controlled cars in an obstacle course, a cooperative exercise in problem solving

Abstract

This report describes an idea of how to enhance classic toys with concepts borrowed from video games, and how to utilize smartphones in order to construct a cooperative game with WiFi controlled cars in an obstacle course. This report focuses heavily on the implementation details of the different parts in order to provide a guide for anyone interested in further development of the idea. Because this project is about creating a prototype, many of the implementation specifics are deliberately simple, such as the cars having no body, or the lack of focus on aesthetics in the controller application. The Raspberry Pi computer was used as the controlling unit on-board the cars, because of their small size and their ease of use. In the end, three cars, two small and one larger, were constructed. Each car can be controlled from an Android application over WiFi, and it is possible to switch back and forth between them. As a conceptual part of an obstacle course, an electric door, which activates when a number of different activating mechanisms are triggered, was also constructed. In order to help facilitate development and construction of diverse obstacle courses, we also wrote a randomized map generation program.