Working in groups of 3, we were given a Lego Mindstorms robot configured to be programmed in RobotC (a language based on C) and tasked with programming it to navigate through a wooden maze to find the finish point, before retracing its steps along the shortest possible route. The robot was equipped with light sensors pointing at the floor, allowing it to follow tape marked out on the maze, and front- and left-facing ultrasonic sensors, allowing it to detect nearby walls.
We developed a program that allowed the robot to successfully navigate the maze using the left-hand rule algorithm, along with a route simplification algorithm that takes a set of recorded moves (forward, left turn or right turn) and iteratively reduces them based on a few simple rules until they can no longer be reduced - meaning the shortest path has been found.
