I found out that my senior design project has nothing to do with wireless as I had hoped, but will instead consist of building a proverbial ‘cat’ to chase the ‘mouse’ that my professor builds. Each will have Infared sensors and detectors used to avoid objects that may stand in their way (i.e. the arena walls) and each should be pretty mobile and agile.

The professor, who is a pretty interesting fellow that consults for a robotics firm, shot down my primary idea thus far: deploy ‘countermeasures’ in the form of IR beacons that would, in effect, confuse the mouse and shrink the arena. His words were something to the extent of “This is a game of chase, this is not war. No projectiles, no missiles, no countermeasures.” Well that just takes all the fun out of it. He went on to say that we have to play fair and cannot purposely attempt to confuse the mouse.

Anyway, I have used my long-held domain of www.photius.net as our project server. Check it out every now and then if you want to keep tabs on our progress.