Roko.ca » Robot Games

A Blast From The Past (Sumo Style) Part I

Roko — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:40:53 +0000

It’s been a busy summer (and then winter), involving getting a new job and moving to a new city, so I haven’t had much time to work on my robots much recently, let alone update my blog! So, instead of posting any updates on my robots (those will come later on when I get more work done), I’ve dug up some information on one of my older Sumo Robots, aptly named:

Chomp!

Chomp! in Competition

Chomp! was my first sumo robot, and first robot beyond BEAM robotics. Built in my High School years, it competed for the first time in the 2000 Western Canadian Robot Games, and placed first in the 5kg Autonomous Sumo competition. Although slow and lumbering, this robot had a good (for the time) vision system and protective skirt system that deployed on startup.

The brains of the Sumo was the rustic Basic Stamp II, powering an L298 H-bridge that controlled 4 motors, one per wheel. An aluminum frame held the robot together, and a custom made decals gave the robot a nice fierce personality

Back before the days of commonly available Sharp IR Rangefinders, I used a solution involving Modulated IR sensors (40 kHz) and modulated IR LEDs. By toggling the LEDs on or off, from a single sensor I could determine if the robot was to the left, right or front of me. A far cry from ‘1.21 GW‘, my current mini sumo, but it worked, and helped get the robot first place!

Chomp! preparing for Battle, before deploying protective skirts

Chomp! went on to compete in the 200 WCRG for the next year or two, but other robots rapidly improved over the years, and Chomp! became too slow and the protective flaps too weak for stronger robots.

Chomp! actually had a sister (brother?) robot, named “Fatal Discharge”, which never ended up working right. Unfortunately, this was before I figured out enough about motor controllers to know that the L298 wasn’t quite up to the task.

After Chomp!, I went on to build “Event Horizon”, which was a moderately successful robot, and one of the first in Canada to have a vacuum system for increased traction. But more on that later…..

2009 Western Canadian Robot Games I

Roko — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:23:00 +0000

The HC12 Motor Controller Board modified as a sumo controller

I spent the second half of last week scrambling to get my mini sumo robot, 1.21 Gw into a working condition for the robot games. I populated the circuit boards mentioned in an earlier post but as I grew low on time I decided to put those aside for this year. Instead of trying to teach myself a new architecture (LPC2138), I decided to concentrate on programming the robot using a board I was familiar with, my HC12 based motor controller design. (This was the prototype motor controller for my Quadruped walker, so I had some base code already written for it, which went a long way towards getting my sumo robot programmed in a little over a day)

331 Grams!

I made the decision to forgo edge sensors for this competition, and instead chose to make the robot as aggressive as possible, the theory being that if I push the opposing robot off the edge before my robot gets to the edge, I won’t need edge sensors. In the end, I managed to get a working robot, measuring 98mm wide by 97mm long, and weighing in at only 331 grams!.After I finish the actual controller board I intend to use on this robot, I’ll have to make some weights to bring it closer to the 500 gram limit.

In the end, I placed first in the advanced mini sumo category, though I had some good competition! For more videos, check out the WCRS website. I will try to post my own pictures and videos when I get a chance.

Upcoming 2009 IEEE Robot Games

Roko — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:32:18 +0000

The 2009 IEEE/WCRG Robot games have been announced for May 9th, 2009. I used to be an avid participant, but first school and then work travel got in the way and as such I’ve only managed to make it out once in the past few year.

This year, I’m hoping to have a mini-sumo ready in time, one that I’ve been designing in the back of my head for several months (years?) now. I’ve had some tiny Maxon motors sitting around that I bought a year ago with the hopes of finding time to start this robot, and today took a break from the quadruped to finally start machining the wheels. I’ll try and post details later.

Anyways, if you can make it out to Calgary for May 9th, it’s definatley worth checking out the Robot Games. If you have spare time, make a robot to compete! It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s more fun building a robot than winning…