Robo Buildo

Week 11 – Final Showdown

This was it, the big day, the one everyone was preparing for. Before the competitions began we had sometime to do any last minute fixing and checking.

unfortunately our group needed this time due to a sudden design change, as we exchanged our single 9volt battery to four 1.5volt batteries. This was problematic as the design had only space for a 9volt battery and it was very hard to implement the four battery pack. The overall outside structure had to be redone to allow more space for the battery pack as well as to fit in the restrictions. The front and back had to be altered to fit into the restrictions and this required the entire front to be redone and the back to be redone partially.

side view
back view
front view

The design is very different to others, as the bots wheels are going along the diagonal of the 1ocm by 10cm by 10cm restrictions. This meant that the bot fit in the regulation box sideways instead of straight. The aesthetic feature that was added to the bot by me was the small, pink donut at the back behind the battery pack. During this time Osmundo was also checking the code and Marin was helping me with the building and checking of the circuit.

the bot on the 10cm by 10cm by 10cm restriction box

Once the battles began, we realized that our motors where spinning the bot at a too fast rate and the code couldn’t keep up, so it had trouble sensing any other bot. Unfortunately due to this we were unable to win against any other bot by pushing then out of the ring. Most battles ended up in our bot near the edge pushing back at the other bot. It was hard for other bots to move ours due to our gripy wheels.

We fell down the ranking by a few places however the final showdown was very fun and entertaining. I have learned a lot over the course of this project. I learned that communication between teammates was extremely important as well as setting goals. Setting goals was very useful as it helped keeping everything up to date. Sharing responsibilities was a useful strategy as it helped getting all the necessary pieces for the robot and no one was over burdened. In general i really enjoyed this project and had great fun with my teammates while doing it. I learned many new skills and general information during this project which i believe will come in use further along the line.

Thank you for being on this fun journey with Osmundo, Marin and I from group 69. The end is just another beginning, as one door closes another opens. Thank you.

Week 10 – Building

For this week Osmundo was again doing some extra improvement of the code for our bot and Marin was working on the circuit and i was in charge of the wheels. So i had a few possible wheels that could be used in our design.

I had brought with me parts that could be used as wheels. I decided to at first make a set of wheels that would at least allow our bot to move as in this week a working bot was the aim. Therefore i firstly began making some normal sized wheels which had decent grip. They were roughly a similar size to the ones previously used in the tip-the-can bot, so that helped in imagining the bots body. Here are two wheels made for the simple design.

made from printer part
made from scanner part

I also brought along two other possible parts which where options for the wheels. The one on the left was a part of a scanner and its usage would have allowed us to only use one motor, as the second roller was a driven roller thanks to the gears attached to the frame of the part. However a issue with this was that our bot would have very poor turning ability if any at all. Therefore this part was left as a last measure part. The one on the right is also a roller which was part of a printer. However this part was much more useful, not only was it thick it also had great grip due to that thickness. The issue was how to fit two along with two motors and in the limitations.

part of scanner
part of printer

In the end the thick roller from a printer became the favored wheel as it had the most grip along with an easy to model inside white roller frame. Due to this another design was needed in order to fit everything inside the limitations. At this point in time we had two possible designs for our bot, with one almost fully done, while the other will be soon completed.

Week 9 – Design

Some ideas which drawn during experimentation with parts placements.

Martin and i began working together on the rough structure of the bot, while Osmundo kept working on upgrading the code to make it more efficient. We discussed many possible variations of designs based on different placement of components. This time around i also had to keep in mind that aesthetics were an important factor for the bot design.

We started talking about different aspects of the designs, such as possible ramps or slopped edges. We began experimenting with the arrangement of the parts while building a rough model out of foam board. However we switched our attention to the wheels of the bot which became the crucial part of the design. We began thinking of different wheel placement and sizing. Originally the plan was just to get better, proper wheels which would be very similar to the ones we had previously.

The main feature i wanted to focus on for the wheels was their grip, as the more grip they had the better for us. Therefore we now decided to get wheels which had better grip than our previous ones. I proposed to my teammates that we should also make the wheels thicker in order to add to the surface area of contact for the wheels, which then improves the bots grip. This completely changed the layout of our bot therefore i began doing need drawings but only to get the rough idea. As the best option was to do the design through trial an error in the building stage.

Week 8 – Design

So for this bot i decided to think a bit outside the simple look design, i proposed a few ideas to my teammates on how we could make our robot have a higher chance of surviving the battles. One of the ideas which we seriously considered was the usage of an EMP device. Marin proposed the usage of something similar to a stung gun. In the rules it states that one bot cannot do anything to the other bot which would bring it harm in the form of breaking it to the point of it not being able to work anymore. This unfortunately ruled out the stung gun option as it could potentially destroy the opponents bot completely. Therefore the EMP seemed doable.

Some early stage rough ideas for overall outer design

EMP is an electromagnetic pulse, also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, which is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Due to the the nature of EMP we had to consider our approach carefully. EMP interference is generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. Therefore we would need to use an EMP that didn’t have a high energy level as it would go beyond break the robots, it would also potentially damage the equipment around the vicinity, including mobile phones and laptops.

I went off to research on how to build a simple EMP device, this link had a simple explanation of how to build a EMP device at home. Luckily i had all the necessary components to build it at home. Moving onto the second issue was how to protect our own bot from the EMP, the solution to this was also found on the internet. The Faraday Cage was one solution that could help us protect our bot from EMP. Another solution is much simpler, its to cover the electronic parts in tin foil.

Related image — An example of Faraday’s Cage

However there were issues that became apparent later. In the case of Faraday Cage it was that it would be hard to implement it into design. For the tin foil it had to cover everything so that no wires or components where exposed, which in our design were exposed. This posed an issue, as if we didn’t cover everything properly then we were at risk at damaging our bot.

Week 7 – The New Beginning

This week we began work on our sumo bot, however this week was more of a planning week rather than action week. Once again for this bot i was in charge of the design and construction of the bot, while Osmundo and Marin where in charge of the code and the circuit. We discussed some possible designs for the bot as well as some possible materials and how we could re-use some of the designs elements/code of the tip the can bot in the sumo bot.

We decided to use different wheels, with same type of rubber as for this bot grip is very important, so we need small yet thick wheels that would provide good grip. We also decided that we will be using a different power source instead of the battery pack as it took up too much space. We are going to use at least one 9volts battery if not two.

After discussing for a good while we split up, in order to accomplish more. Osmundo and Marin began looking on how to improve the code and how to change it in order to implement more parts, while i began to research on some good designs. I looked up some sumo bots in order to know what common design approaches some people might take. This helped me to come up with some designs in order to counter the opponents bot so that their attacks were either made useless or made so that they could be used against them. I didn’t really have a solid design, i just have some vague ideas which i was going to work on during the upcoming break.

Overall this week, proved once again that communication is key as i need to know if any extra components were being added to the bot as i would have to take that in account when design the bot. Also by listening to my teammates arguments i realized some flaws in my ideas and it helped me get a new perspective on our bot, which helped a lot. As i believe that if i can look at it from many perspectives then i would be able to prepare the bot so that it could withstand and counter the enemy bots attacks.

Week 6 – Testing

This was it, the time has come to put our bot to the test. I went downstairs along with Osmundo to the lab in order to change the bots wheels while Marin went to the lecture. The new wheels were basically the same size as the previous ones however these had a much better grip. The rubber which provided the grip, fit very tightly over the wheels so the chance of it slipping off was very small. While Osmundo was doing the final checking of the code i went over and used the glue gun to attach the metal rod to the wheels which was then inserted into the motor. I also using the glue gun attached a laser cut part, which helped attach none standard wheels the motors, to the wheels. This part allowed the wheel to be securely attached to the motor.

Once this was done i went back and attached everything together, and we began doing some informal testing, Marin had joined us by now and began helping Osmundo. It turned out that for some reason the code wasn’t fully working anymore. The problem seemed to be that it was either not sensing the bottle or sensing it but then loosing it. As i wasn’t of much help on the code, i began trying to make our bot a bit nicer. The only thing i managed to really add was a smile on the switch at the front, as the eyes where the two sensors at the front.

I attempted to help out with the code however i wasnt of much help, so i was the one that brought it to testing and i wold start the bot during the testing. Our first recorded time was around 10 seconds. We went back to our lab in order to improve the code, after a few attempts i went to do some rough tests while the boys stayed behind and ran some more checks and discussed the code. I had done two test runs before the boys joined me and our time had dropped by 1 second. Roughly on our 9th if not 12th attempt our bot got the time of 7.73 seconds and that placed us 8th in the ranking. We were pretty happy with that outcome so we decided to leave it at that and go home.

Week 5 – Building

This week was the week that we had to put the robot together and make sure that everything was working well. My job was to make sure that the bot would fit in the required measurements after it was put together. This wasn’t as easy at it would seem. As I had to remember to keep in mind not only the weight but also the height restrictions.

Osmundo and Marin were checking the code to make sure that the entire code was fine and operational. During the time that the boys where checking and fixing the code along with the circuit, I was cutting out the possible chassis from the foam board. I decided to cut out all of the four possible chassis so that I would have the options when putting the entire bot together. If I had all the possible chassis then I would be able to manipulate the design to make sure that it all fit in the required restrictions.

After having the chassis cut i began trying to put the bot together, despite the fact that the boys weren’t fully done with the checking. I had to plan the structure of the bot with rough measurements as i couldn’t take the actual parts as they were still being checked and tested. However i was given the wheels and the motors along with the battery pack. Using the rough measurements of all the pieces i noticed that we would be very tight on space at the top. So i explained the situation to Osmundo and Marin, that we needed to do something to decrease the overall height of the bot. The possible solutions that I came up with to counter this problem were: to possibly get smaller wheels, get a different power source like a 9volts battery, cut the wires to make them stick out less or to remove the chassis completely.

We as a group decided to completely remove the chassis as it was an unnecessary feature that only added to the weight and nothing else. We decided to use the battery pack as a chassis. This solution gave us not only more space at the top but it also saved us some weight. We stuck the motors directly onto the battery pack using double sided tape and they were positioned in a way that the were almost flush with the edge of the battery pack. For the wheels i had brought in rubber bands in order to give the bot some grip. I went and attempted to attach the rubber to our plastic wheels using the glue gun, however that ended very poorly as the rubber wouldn’t stick to the wheels for a very long time. So i decided to get a different type of rubber for next week that would actually fit the wheels better and wouldn’t require me to use the glue gun to hold the rubber band on the wheels.

Once the wheels where attached to the motors another problem came up, which was that the motors where now being dragged along the surface of the table and that could possibly slow down our bot. We decided to put some foam board underneath them to not only help them move but to also help level the bot. After this it was just a case of putting the rest of the bot together.

After the rest of the bot was attached we decided to do a quick test run, and we noticed that the bottom foam board part didn’t help the bot speed wise. In fact you could say it didn’t make much of a difference, in order to help improve the bots speed we added a round ended thumbtack to help move the bot along the surface. Now the bot was almost complete for next weeks testing, all it needed was better wheels which i was going to get over the weekend.

Week 4 – Design

This week was very similar to last week as it involved me working with the designing and allocating the bots components in the given restrictions. Using the foam board, which I bought in easons over the weekend, I started drawing up three different possible designs for the bots chassis. All three fit the restrictions very tightly, therefore I picked one of the designs and did a slightly smaller version of it. While I was doing that drawing of these designs on the foam board Osmundo and Marin were working on the circuit and the code as there was some problem with our main arduino which didn’t allow us to code the bot, our secondary spare arduino also wasn’t working.

After I had completed the drawings on the foam board I began cutting out the four chassis. This took me a while as I tried to go slowly to make sure I cut the foam board accurately. The cutting itself took a good while, however that wasn’t a big issue as either way I had to wait for Osmundo and Marin to fix the issue with our arduino board before I could do much more. I had to wait till they had the situation under control as I needed the completed circuit in order to judge and try out different arrangements of the bots components on the bots chassis so that everything would fit in the set restrictions.

I also had bought a small tractor toy over the weekend and I broke it apart in order to get its wheels as i couldn’t find any place that sold wheels separately. The wheels were attached to each other via a small metal rod, so I used pliers in order to separate the wheels from the metal rod. I did that for both sets of the wheels. After this I had to talk to Marin and Osmundo about the wheels, as we had to decide which set of wheels were we going to use. As one set is slightly smaller than the other in diameter and this would impact on the angle of the chassis slope relating to the floor. We as a team decided to have both sets of wheels prepared for next week so that we would have two options available to us.

We also had to consider how we would attach our wheels to the motor as these wheels are ones from a toy so they don’t have any way to connect to the motor in a standard way. We considered using the glue gun so that we simply glue the wheels to the motors. However we also considered the metal rod, as those can be used to hold the wheel on one end and the other end would be connected to the motor which would allow possible errors as this solution isn’t as permanent as the glue gun option. We also decided to put an elastic band on the wheels to give it better grip to the floor so the wheels would easily move on the floor.

Then all together we started discussing the problem of the bumper which would be needed to insure the sensor, that will be used to tip and detect the can upon contact, was going to fit in the restrictions. We considered having the bumper span across the entire length of the front of the bot to insure that the sensor would definitely work. After our discussions I began on looking at how to exactly position everything on the chassis so that it would fit in the restrictions.

Overall this week I feel like it was mainly focused on discussing the ideas with my teammates, as a good few points were pointed out to me which helped improve the design of the chassis and helped me visualize the bot better. It showed that communication was the key as without it I wouldn’t have been able to produce our current design which should satisfy all the needs as well as fit in the restrictions provided.

Week 3 – Design

This week we divided our work so that we could accomplish more. Osmundo and Marin were working on the code and the circuit, and I moved onto the design process. I firstly measured the rough dimensions of all our electronic components that are necessary for the bot. I then cut out a few 10cm x 10cm sheets of paper so that i could get a idea of the size restrictions. One of the restrictions is that the bot has to be able to fit in a box that is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm without any of the components sticking out. I also have to not only take in account the size restrictions, I must also remember about the weight restriction which is that the bot must weigh less than or 500grams.

I then began drawing up some rough sketches of possible designs. I drew up two designs and then started looking at how to fit everything into the restrictions.I then realized that the chassis of the bot had to be very light and that the design itself couldn’t contain any unnecessary pieces. After thinking through about the design, I did a rough drawing of a more reasonable design and presented it to the other two members of my group.

They were both worried if everything would fit within the restrictions and so we agreed on using the most simplest design so that we would definitely fit everything into the restrictions. After having a very basic concept of the design, I began thinking of what material we should use. I had to keep a few things in mind, one was that it had to be a light material, two was that it also had to be durable and be able to withstand pressure and thirdly the cost of the material had to be reasonable too. After consulting with my teammates on the possible options of materials, we narrowed it down to 2 options which where foam board or compressed cardboard. Both materials have pros and cons and so we as a group decided to go with foam board.

I had to keep a few things in mind, one was that it had to be a light material, two was that it also had to be durable and be able to withstand pressure and thirdly the cost of the material had to be reasonable too. After consulting with my teammates on the possible options of materials, we narrowed it down to 2 options which where foam board or compressed cardboard. Both materials have pros and cons and so we as a group decided to go with foam board.

We chose foam board for a few reasons, but mainly for the fact that its light and cheap. After choosing the material, I began looking up wheels as we need 2 for our bot. As a group we agreed that we either want thin and tall wheels or thin and small wheels, these choices where made to insure that our bot would fit into the restrictions.

Overall this week, I primarily focused on the design part of the project. While Marin and Osmundo did the coding and circuit by themselves as they knew what they are doing. Since I couldn’t help them much, I focused on the issue of design and this turned out to be more challenging than I initially anticipated. However that is the fun part about design, and next week I will continue with the design process of the bot.

Week 2 – Motor Control

After last weeks successful completion of the LED flash challenge, we were given a different task which was to get our motors to work. The circuit which was required for the motors to work was more complex that the previous ones we used for the LEDs. The lectures gave us some basic knowledge on how different components worked and after that we were free to begin.

Much like last week we had to first build a circuit to which the motors where going to be connected, the motors also needed some wires to be soldered to them so that they could be connected to the circuit. The actual process of building the circuit did not take long but the coding did. Osmundo was once again doing the code. Once he finished and we uploaded the code, we tried to turn it on and the code didn’t work as it intended so some readjustments had to be done. Once those where made we re-uploaded the code and the motors worked fine.

After the motors where complete we moved onto the sensors. Our bot needs sensors to be able to visualize the can and where it’s positioned. When the bot locates the can using the sensors it will go towards. These sensors control the movement of the motors, as the sensors are used to read the surface. One reads if its on a black surface while the other reads if it’s on a white surface. The moment the sensor picks up that it’s on a white surface it will change the rotation of one motor to turn the entire bot away from the white surface. Another sensor is used to locate the can it self as it reads the a certain area in front of it. Once that sensor picks up an object in front of it, it will drive the motors forward towards the object. The circuit building of this wasn’t very complicated and didn’t take us much time to put together, however the coding was a whole different story. We had to redo our code a few times as the code didn’t work the first few times around when we tried it.

After we got both the motors and sensors working we attempted to get the switch working. The switch will be used by the bot when it hits the can it then controls the motors and makes them go in reverse. This is necessary for the bot as it needs to gently hit the can and then reverse so that it doesn’t make the can fall over. We had a code set up however it was working in an improper way, as when the switch was pressed down the motors where on and they went forward and when the switch was loose the motors weren’t on at all. We will have to continue working on this next week.