Comments on Assignment/PS 4

The assignment was graded out of 40 points. In general, testing and explanation combined were worth a point on the software lab, while testing and explanation were worth a point each when coding for the design lab.

• Software Lab: 8 Questions = 16 points
  • Q1 - 2 points Some students forgot to include code and lost a point
  • Q2 - 2 points
  • Q3 - 2 points
  • Q4 - 2 points
  • Q5 - 2 points
  • Q6 - 2 points Common mistake: make sure the "world" machine is second, so that test cases give a position as output
  • Q7 - 2 points for plots
  • Q8 - 2 points Common mistake: giving transition table instead of an environment diagram.

• Design Lab: 9-14, 17-18 = 8 questions = 24 points
  • Q9 - 4 points: It's importand that the two machines step at the same time, so that the output of machine 1 is not changed before use as an input in machine 2.
  • Q10 - 4 points:
  • Q11 - 4 points: Common mistakes: not using reset to get the initial state, simply comparing final angle to imput angle (Correct way:checking difference between final and initial and comparing to input)
  • Q12 - 2 points:
  • Q13 - 4 points:
  • Q14 - 2 points:
  • Q17 - 2 points Two main sources of error - Margin of error in checking end of state machine, and the fact that the robot is a real system with non ideal behavior, such as wheel slippage.
  • Q18 - 2 points The non-deterministic behaviors are not very good for structured tasks, but ok for unstructured ones. Compare robots on an automotive assembly line to a household vacuuming robot: the former have a structured behavior, while the behavior of the latter is non-deterministic.