My Mobot for the 2010 Mobot race has finally been completed. I have tested it electrically, so I know that part works (all of the sensors!). I’m working on writing code for the race (just over a week away!). I’ll add more pictures and talk about progress as it’s made. Hopefully I’ll get some video of it in action!
Building robots is expensive. Motors $20, controller $20, motor driver $20, sensors $10, battery $10. Just the basic components and you’re already up to $80. The costs add up fast and it’s hard to pour a lot of money into building a lot of robots. That’s one reason why it’s great to have a resource like the Robotics Club. If I wanted, I could walk in and build a complete robot with parts that are already there. All I would have to invest is time, no money (well, a $25 membership fee, but that’s beside point).
Because building robots is expensive, for now I’m going to be focusing on projects that don’t require funding or that I have funding for already. I’m going to focus on Mobot (which I have almost all of the parts for), Micro-Colony (which I’m getting funded through the Build18 project), StairBot (a robotics club project I’m the head of, I’ll keep updated on its status as I work on it), and some other projects that I have in mind.
Unfortunately, I’m pushing Desk Rover to the side for the time being. Mainly because my robot fund is a little short of the price tag of desk rover, and I have plenty of other robots to work on in the meantime. I will build the first stage (chassis, sensors, motors, etc. no LCD or wireless) once I have enough money.
I will continue to work on the FWR3 Jasper. Most of the work in it is design work as of now, and that doesn’t cost anything but time (which, I now have a lot of as I’m on break).
Last Friday I spent a decent amount of time working on the mobot for this year. I was able to get the chassis mostly complete. I need to mount the electronics and I still need to build the sensor array. But other than that, construction is mostly complete. I would really like to add a cover over it (in the case that it would rain on race day) using vacu-formed plastic. The robotics club has a vacu-former, so I’ll probably give it an attempt.
I still need to finish some soldering for the sensors, but, for the most part, I’m done. Here are some pictures:
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