Robotics Competition!

My school is going to an area robotics competition this Saturday. We entered in lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight sumo robot classes. The middleweight and heavyweight are completly autonomous, while the lightweight is R/C. They (mid and heavy) include left, right, and back IRPD sensors, line detectors (can't go out of the ring :shock: ) and use the OOPic microcontrollers. These are very easy to use (if you know what you are doing) and is a great next step from a Basic Stamp. Hopefully I'll have the time to snap some pics (when I'm not fixing code lol) and be able to post them. It's a blast. Last year, running on Basic Stamp IIs (which are slow compared to the object-oriented OOPic code) we took second in heavyweight and third in middleweight. We would've won the middleweight but one of our motor driver lines was only plugged partially in so the robot went out of the ring and lost. The other robots were no challenge - most of them did not actively search, they just spin in the center of the ring. The ones that did search did so well, but were not designed with too much thought to the efficency of the program or the sensors. Competitions are great, try to find/create one in your area! This one is being held from Friday to Saturday in Marion, Ohio (It's a multi-state event) and is wonderful : If you live in the area I encourage you to go! - I don't have an address but this is where my best friend comes in. Hope to see you there!

Cheers.

theinfamousbob,

Well, it looks like Norfolk Technical skunked us both. We did get second in both heavyweight and middleweight. The paint kept balling up under our tires.

What was your excuse?

Rick Brooks

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Your from india
how did you show up to that game?

GTAman,

I've never been to India. That would have been a long trip.

On the other hand, Indiana is next to Ohio for a much shorter drive.

Rick Brooks

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Oops read it wrong

sorry

never mind

sorry for the long wait before replying...i haven't been on the forums lately :roll:

Yea, our treads were doing horrible...that floor was so bad...



Plus, our robots suffered from "performance anexiety" and kinda jittered in the ring...the thing is, the day before our robots worked fine in almost the same conditions...except for those....barriers around the ring.

ah well....our journey bot won first....it was the only one in the "student modified autonomous" category but had been changed to student built about two weeks before. the programs was designed to turn left (not my doing lol) and it seemed to get stuck in the starting area...ah well.

good luck next year!!!


Oh, and Rick - What brain do you use?? It's always seemed pretty efficient and well made...those Power Wheels gearboxes are an amazing sight..all four of them. (did I get the right team??)

I figure that they painted the sumo rings a few days before the event and the paint just wasn't fully curred.

One of the guys in our group has been working on the autonomous Journey contest for three years and still isn't close. I do not know what it will take to solve that one.

Actually our drive train comes from Peg Perego. Both Peg Perego and Power Wheels are local companies. When the group first got into big sumo contest (1996 I think, I wasn't involved then) they approached Power Wheels who suggested they contact Peg Perego. The Peg Perego people have been most generous since then.

In the first 150 lbs match this year, we burned up a motor. That was the first mechanical failure that we have had in ten years of Peg Perego products.

Could some of your robot's "performance anexiety" come from our sonar jammer?

I'm affraid that I've been bugging the Ohio Tech people about solid barriers. I liked the concrete lane deviders. It keeps the robots out of the crowd.

We are using the Parallax BS2SX for a processor. Go to:

http://brooksbots.com/

and click on Flaming P'nut for the detains.

This year a new goup of students/adults took over the 150 pound sumo. They stretched the wheelbase and added a second Gel Cell for 24 volt supply and added a RoboteQ (http://www.roboteq.com/)motor control.

Actually we spent most of the time working on start routines with both the 75 lbs and 150 lbs sumos. It didn't do much good with the painted surface. Well, there is always next year.

The 150 lbs sumo group is drawing up plans now for a completely new 150 lbs sumo. There will be a few new surprises if they get it built.

Rick

No, your sonar jammer wasn't causing any problems with us. We're using IRPD sensors and I fear that the sensors were calibrated for too great a distance and were seeing the barriers. I never knew that the BS2SX was that powerful, either. I thought I saw one of your motors blow up, too... Ah well. As for the barriers, just move the crowd farther away/in the bleachers. I heard lots of complaints relating to spectators in the stands not being to see anything, due to both students and barriers alike. The ring needs to be more durable, too. Our robots started seeing the footprints from the dirty shoes.

An autonomous journey bot isn't too hard, either. Keep the logic simple. I figured out how to turn our program into full hard-wired logic with only a few gates and some clever thinking. Good luck!

Oh, and after seeing (what I thought at the time was your sonar sensor) I mentioned an idea for a sonar jammer :lol: . Thought it was pretty funny when I found out they were jammers .


Description of "Performance Anexiety":

1) running away from sensed objects (not joking)
2) random turns
3)jitters
4)perpetual right turn, acting like a wounded animal

cant think of any others...it was pretty bad. Our gym has a ring that's about the same size and color, just a little ligher with more differences/white paint spots, but both our middleweight and heavyweight did well. Ah well. Maybe our new fuses will be in tomorrow so we can re-run the bots and see what caused the problems...

A robot builder's work is never done.

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A jammer is ilegal in the traditional robot sumo.

There could only be electro magnet's.

Where did you guy's learn about sumo robotic's????

theinfamousbob,

Aren't those IRPD sensors very difficult to adjust the range? Some sort of mechanical thing, if I remember correctly. I've found that adjustable sensor distance is critical. For this event, the kids cut the distance down to about 12 to 18 inches and we never saw the walls. In the past we have had the sensors set up for 3 to 4 feet...with the judges at the edge of the ring. I don't know what the maximum distance is, but we have had them set for 8 feet while testing. The distance depends so much on local lighting conditions.

Explorer Post 2829 is a Boy Scout related group sponsored by Indiana Tech that meets every other Wednesday night during the school year. We teach interested high school students microcontroller programming with the BS2. Anything more advanced than the BS2SX is too much for them to learn and use in the limited time that we have.

The motor blowing was an interesting thing. The two rear motors were doing all of the work in that bought. There was a bright red glow comming out of the brushes for quite awhile. Only one motor melted the brush holder, the other motor (replaced them both, just in case) is still OK. The interesting thing is that the motor that was destroyed was new last year and the one that survived was 6 or 7 years old. From now on we will take the time to properly break-in new motors.

I'm not going to get into the Journey. My son is off to college after winning the non-tactile maze for four years and I'm just an adult advisor for now. Son #2 is in eighth grade and will be elgible to join our group next year. We will see if he is interested. We do let the kids pick their projects and help them as much as possible.
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Roboticinfo,

Much to my disappointment, there is no universal set of sumo rules. If you are going to compete in a contest, it is best to study the local rules. What is even more important is the interpretation of those locat rules. Ask lots of questions ahead of time so that you won't be disappointed the day of the event. Jamming is a good example of that. A literal interpretation of many rules allows jamming, but local interpretation outlaws it, but allows things like decoy flags, covering the white edge lines, and white painted scoops.

I don't understand your comment on electromagnets.

I learned about Sumo robots when my son joined the Explorer Post. We do have a separate local robot contest twice a year that has become very popular. Now I go to the local contests, the Ohio Tech contest with a group of high school students, and last year some friends talked me into attending the CIRC event. That is plenty of fun competition for me.

Rick

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The traditional sumo robot is from japan wich is the same rule's as robo game's and singapore robogames and elec.

What you are basicly saying is we make are on rule's in sumo robotics
bur this is how ever a traditional sumo robotic's.

Rick-

Yes, the IRPD distance may have been a problem. We set them for a longer range in the hopes of spotting an enemy quicker, but that resulted in us losing a match last year. One of the judges was standing inside the blocks right in front of our 'bot and didn't realize that it was locking on to him. Unfortunately, our code was written so that it was continously monitoring our IRPDs (Sharp GP2D12 I think, can't remember for sure right now) and thus would hit the line, reverse for one code cycle and then go forward again. It was only a matter of time before the loss of traction caused us to slide out. The IRPDs are not very hard to adjust (this year!!) We switched to a higher end OOPic and are able to use the built in A2D converters with a threshold range. Last year we were using comparators or op-amps with 15 turn pots, which was a nightmare (about four boads that half-worked soldered together for one bot.) The motor burnout sounds quite interesting...I wasn't around the ring at that time but I could hear the crowd going wild....Go figure. Ah well. Nothing to do now but rebuild/tune the bots and get on our way...

Your motor controller is very nice also...We're using a 12v car battery for two wheelchair motors run thru a TTL relay (20A output.) Despite all of this, we still ended up burning both fuses out on the relays, and we didnt have any spares....thank goodness this didn't happen during the match. As for your high school group that learns about microcontrollers, an OOPic isn't all that complicated, although it delves into object-oriented code and such...maybe best left for an intermediate course, after all.

-Infamous Bob

Infamous Bob,

I've never used the Sharp GP2D12, but I did look at them once. I think that it sends out a very narrow beam, which is OK for our big sumos.

One of the guys here has been trying to get me to switch to the OOPICs, but so far the Stamps do everthing that I want.

We did have relay motor controls six years ago, but switched to MOSFET H-bridges. The last one cost us $300 in parts and it occasionally smoked. The blue box is great...simple serial out commands, and it appears to be idiot proof (we need idiot proof).

Well, I think that you learn more by loosing than by winning. We learned a lot this year.

Good luck next year.

Rick

Same to you!!

-TheInfamousBob