We had two adventuresome young men who braved the trials and tribulation for the weather for our second meeting. We again worked on understanding the principals of robotic competition.
We had two different designs this week. The Hammer and the Shovel are both well tested combat robot design techniques that our young drivers used for their cars. The Hammer tries to knock the Lego mini-fig from the top of the opponents top. The Shovel attempts to flip the other car over.
I was pleased with both the designs and cant wait to see what the young men build Tuesday.
One of the problems they are discovering is that R/C cars are hard to steer. That is why we will be converting the cars to tank steer. Car steering requires a large turning radius making it hard to come into contact with your opponent. Tank steer or skid steer allows a much smaller turning radius as one of the treads can be spun backwards allowing the tank/robot to spin in place.
Another problem the kids are having is that these cars are either on or off. Without proportional controls the cars either accelerate at full speed or are stopped. Once we build proportional controls on the robots they will be able to have move slowly which will ad more control.
Even with the difficulties of using off the shelf r/c (cheap) cars the young men have learned a lot about design and implementation of the robots weapons.
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