The challenge was to make a sumo robot that will compete in a sumo tournament against the other groups in our class as well as the groups in the other class.
Ideas and Prototypes
With our robot, we had many ideas and prototypes. Some of which we/I tested and some would have taken too long to make or were to unrealistic to make. Some ideas we:
- A gear ratio was one thing that we used. We originally had it so it was faster but with some thought we decided to switch the gears around to make it have more pushing force. This did make the robot slower but that was ok. The pushing power made up for it.
- A sideways motor on the front with hooks on it to catch the front of the other robots and/or cords. This was a problem because of the light sensor that we needed to have on it get in the way.
- This was also the case with a motor on the front facing downwards with hooks to push the other robots to the side. The whole idea was to make it wait 2 seconds, move backwards until it sees the line, move forwards a little bit so it’s not that close to the edge, and push the other robots to the side leading them off the edge.
- To have 1 of the motors off set/reversed to make it spin along with the gear ration to make it super-fast and give it a hammer arm for extra pushing power.
- We thought if it started on its side and had the littler motor on the top with one big hook on it to flip it up so we could make it as long (sideways) as we want. This would have taken some time and other parts, more than what was in one mindstorms kit and we weren’t allowed to do that.
We ended up doing a gear ratio, a sensor on the front (so if it sees black it will stop, back up 1 wheel rotation, turn around 80° and keep driving) and having a “folding out” ramp that kind of worked. I wasn’t at the sumo tournament so I don’t know how we did but in the practice tests, it works as intended. It stared of with the 2 second wait like it was supposed to and then it has a moment of going forward fast for a second (to flip open the ramp).
The programming was simple. All it had to do was turn around when it sees black, and go forward otherwise.
Tyson’s thoughts…
- What we did was trade speed for power so we were strong but slow.
- We had a small ramp that was used to lift are opponents so we could easily lift them up to stop them pushing us and so they cannot get us out of the ring.
- We did a fair bit of testing and found that we loved having more power than speed.
- We changed the wheels and placed gears to stop the wheels from gaining too much speed so we could be like a wrecking ball and hit like a truck.
Sumo robot & competition: by Harrison, Lucas and Tyson
Written by Harrison and Tyson
