Today, we had a meeting of the minds to put together some of the parts James bought so we can start putting together the kits for the mini sumo bot class and competition. The main idea for the kit is to get as close to $25 ($30 at most) as possible to make a working mini sumo autonomous fighting robot! The plan is to laser cut or 3D print the body and chassis parts and maybe wheels if it can keep the cost down. Each of the sets of parts had the same “brains” where the main control code will live to drive it around and read the sensors. We’ve decided to use an Arduino Nano V3 for the brain. We also decided after spending nearly an hour trying to put together the Tamiya gearbox kit that we would be better off and have less frustrated kids and adults if they didn’t have to put this together. So we picked the offset gearbox motors to make it easier and faster to put the robot together. We’ll be having another meeting where we finalize the kit parts and the design for the laser cut and/or 3D printed parts in addition to the basic Arduino code. So stay tuned to our meetup.com events for this next meeting and the full class and competition events this summer! Here’s a few pictures from today’s event:
