Chapter 3, A Concept for a Practical Robot Design Process

1. A storyboard for a movie is used not just for advancing the plot, but showing what point of view will be used – in other words, it is used to plan camera angles, directions, and movements. The purpose of both storyboards is to “tell the story” of what happens, so they are different, and the same.  The point of view of a computer software storyboard should be the user.
2. Who? What? When? Where? Why?.  More relevant questions might be: How well?  How often?  How much?

3. Use cases are from the user's perspective and never include implementation details.
4. The robot has to: determine a route to the toybox; plan a path; avoid obstacles along the way; align itself with the front of the toybox; drive up to the toybox; and move the robot arm to clear the top.
5. It is to complement the teller of the joke – the robot should say “That is very funny”, or “I am sorry, I am unable to groan”.
6. The robot needs to send a video back to the operator so the operator can see where they are going.
7. The robot shall have a sensor capable of detecting negative obstacles in the floor (that is, stairs going downward, balconies) at a distance of at least six inches from the robot, along the robot’s driving direction.
8. 30 degrees/320 pixels wide = 0.0937 deg/pixel. 

35 pixels* deg/pixel  = 3.28 degrees.

This makes an isosceles triangle; we need a right triangle to do the math.

Divide the base in two to make a right triangle – base = 3 inches.

We also divide the angle in half. 3.28 becomes 1.64 degrees.

3" / tan(1.64) = 104 inches or 8.73 feet.