Days tick by......

 With less than a month to go it seems we have lots of solutions which are all but ready to go. Line followers that can see lines but can they drive seven metres in a straight line? Square finders that can see the squares, but can they drive to one and then the next? All will be revealed on the 21st April in Cambridge but for now here's some progress.

The Lava Palaver line detector works well but instead of a fixed mount, needed a bit of adjustment so has now been given an articulated mount.

This has been 3D printed to be integral with the magnet attached battery box cover. More magnets have been deployed to the rear part of the robot for quick change attachments for shooting zombies and collecting barrels.

It's great to see the layout before dozens of wires obscure the view!!!! More uses for magnets has been found in adjusting the barrel handler. 

This also makes it quicker and easier to change the types of attachment to see which works best. 

This is our barrel handler in serious searchlight mode. It obviously works but needs a bit more software behind it to get barrels to their destination. 

More on this to come. 

The Escape Route challenge still needs a bit of work, but we're working from an old formula so it's more tidying up than new development. To get cleaner lines on the robot we've hidden a VL53 laser range finder inside one of the cab windows, along with IR sensors on the sides and an ultrasonic sensor on the front of the robot.

When not in use we'll be closing the window with bluetack!!!!

First experiments with the sensors aren't perfect, as the following video shows.

But after a bit of tuning and building a test course, it's starting to look the part.

 

This is our goth themed video selection but we just need to get this running a bit more smoothly.

 We've had a solution for Minesweeper for sometime, but we've only just now got round to fitting it to the robot. 

It's an overhead gantry mounted camera which reports an XY co-ordinate of the red illuminated square on demand from the robot. The robot will be running on mecanum wheels for this challenge and the gantry is adjustable to keep the robot within the height limit of 450mm. Navigation is all relative to the red square, so, see a red square and drive to it!! To reduce the impact of the gantry on the image, 4mm black carbon fibre rods have been used for support. Also in the picture is the carry handle for the robot, to make handling easier and safer. A better view here.

With a variety of configurations needed for the competition day, a new control panel is being created for the rear of the robot which will allow the robots Pi to be quickly switched between challenge modes, as well as a battery monitor and a start/stop button. To make sure we've got everything covered for each challenge configuration, we've started a checklist, I'm sure it'll get longer soon!!! Here's where it is now.

Challenge: Lava Palaver

• Wheels: 105mm
• Bonnet: Line Detector
• Back cover: Plain
• Attachment name: LINES

Challenge: Zombie Apocalypse

• Wheels: 70mm
• Bonnet: Plain
• Back cover: Nerf Gun
• Attachment name: ZOMBI

Challenge: Eco-Disaster

• Wheels: 70mm
• Bonnet: ???Not yet determined???
• Back cover: Barrel Picker
• Attachment name: ECODI

Challenge: Minesweeper

• Wheels: Mecanum
• Bonnet: Plain
• Back cover: Camera Gantry
• Attachment name: MINES

Challenge: Escape Route

• Wheels: 70mm
• Bonnet: Ultrasonic detector
• Back cover: Plain
• Attachment name: None

Challenge: Pi Noon

• Wheels: Mecanum
• Bonnet: Balloon attachment
• Back cover: Plain
• Attachment name: RC

Challenge: Temple of Doom

• Wheels: 105mm
• Bonnet: Plain
• Back cover: Plain
• Attachment name: RC

Next time we hope to have more demonstration videos of being fully ready for all challenges.....but then again maybe not!!!!