Week 8 Update

This week we mainly focused on calibrating the code and modifying the body in order to perfect our design. For example, we realized that our robot was a little bit too large from front to back, so we had to relocate the front light sensor in order to meet the size requirements. This change also altered the readings of the light sensor to a degree, however a simple recalibration of the values fixed the problem.

One other modification to the robot body is that added more weight towards the front of the robot. Before the light sensor was able to detect the outer edge, the skid we have in the back of the robot was knocked off the ring and was caught on the edge when the robot tried to move forward. This meant that we had too much weight focused towards the rear of the robot. To balance the weight, we placed more LEGO pieces towards the front of the robot. While doing this, we were also constantly measuring its total weight after each major addition in order to stay under the requirement of 1 kilogram.

With the competition happening next week, our group is confident that our sumo robot will be a major success. After testing it with a basic NXT robot (shown below), we feel that our robot has a sturdy design that will win us the competition.

Here is a video of our sumo robot (right) testing against the basic robot we built (left) to get a general idea of how our robot will fare in the upcoming competition.