Tic-Tac-LEGO

Abstract

The Lego Mindstorms Robot Command eXplorer (RCX) is a popular robotics kit that provides an opportunity to explore embedded software control. The limitations of the RCX provide a direct challenge that is typical of real-world embedded system development. This poster summary describes the Java-based development of a set of robots that coordinate to play the game of tic-tac-toe. Three key challenges were investigated in the project: 1) recognition of the state of the game board, 2) computation of the next-move within a reasonable timeframe using robots working in parallel, and 3) navigating a robot to the proper board location to mark the desired move. Game board analysis takes the form of a robot that performs optical scanning. A min-max tree algorithm was implemented in the primary control robot to determine the next best move. Specialized components affect the physical movement of the robots and mark the appropriate tic-tac-toe cell.