I didn't realize how fast the robot would be moving right away. I again had the motors wired backwards so that right away the robot would drive continuously backwards, even though I swear I wired it up according to the diagram in the guide. Once that was fixed, my robot was then continuously bumping into walls so I had to increase the duration that the robot would back up, I increased the turn time a little bit and also increase the distance at which the ultrasonic sensor would detect an object and start backing up. For some reason whenever I reduced the PWM to the motors the robot would continuously back up and turn and I am not sure why at this point. I also had a big problem with the batteries falling out of the battery pack with even the slightest bump to the robot. This was an easy fix with a bit of tape though. After several failed attempts  at tweaking the robots coding (and one close call during a test where the robot almost fell down my basement stairs), I finally got it to operate in a way that seemed better fit for my environment.

Autonomous Robot Fail:

Autonomous Robot Final test: