Greg has made a great start on his Enhanced Sumo!  This is the name he's given to a new autonomous larger scale sumo event he's writing up rules for.  The idea behind this sumo contest is to have a larger form and weight available to be able to use more easily available parts.  The contest will also have different floor types and obstacles.  The idea is the robots have to be a bit more versatile and smart than traditional Mini-Sumo.  His frame is made out of angle aluminum. The motors are surplus Globe gear motors.  He's planning on Sonar and IR rangers, with a PIC processor.

The Brass wedge robot is Greg's champion Mini-Sumo.  So far it has been the top sumo for a number of months now.  Its lightning fast and so far nobody's been able to figure out how to even get close to defeating it.  The rest of the groups only hope is for one of its ailing gears to finally fail!

Ed's Mini-Sumo now sports motor deployed flags in the hope of fooling other sumo's, especially Greg's brass wedge.  The robot uses Sonar sensors which is an unusual sensor, most sumo's typically use IR proximity or IR range sensors.  The strange knobby white rubber tires are made out of rubber mats used to line drawer's.

Ed's Mars Rover and Mini-Sumo.  The Mars Rover is a robot designed to compete with FRR's arch rivals to the south, DARC, Denver Area Robotics Club.  The robots main structure is a 4" X 4" X 6" aluminum box tubing.  It uses stepper motors, large model airplane tires and a omni wheel in the back.  It has a NSTC color camera, sonar, IR range finders.  It will use a combination of autonomous and RF communications from "Earth" to control it.  The gripper on the front can swing down and grab 'Mars' rocks.   Click here for DARC Mars Rover rules

A bunch of robots that can run around and grab things!  Left is Greg's Object Grabber.  Center and right, Ed's Mars Rover and Object Grabber.  Both of these Object Grabber robots are designed to compete in the the clubs 'Object Grabber' contest.  The central theme is the robot has to identify the correct objects to remove from an arena, wrongly removing 'bad' objects results in loosing points.  The contest has proven a long running challenge, however more bots are being built and forks are getting savvy in their hardware and software work and good results are starting to show.

A close-up of Greg's Object Grabber.  It uses a little servo to tilt the IR range finders to try and identify the objects using their height.  The user interface uses a pot to dial though menu items to select robot functions.  The robot has troubles with going straight due to drift in the modified servos used for propulsion.  Some day Greg plans on implementing the encoders he's imbedded in the servos shell and solve the problem.

Some of Dennis's robots.  Bottom left is a Mini-Sumo named 'Brainless', due to it having no micro processor.  Upper center is another Mini-Sumo, based on the Mark III sumo chassis, using one of Dennis's newer processor boards.  Bottom right is Dennis's Object Grabber.  This Object Grabber probably has the best ability yet to find, run up to, grab and identify objects, of any of the robots so far.  The gripper is equipped with metal contacts to touch the copper rings mounted on the objects that can be used, by resistance to identify them.  Some times the rings are a bit corroded and the robot will grasp several times each time harder tell it can see a resistance value.  It rather looks like the bot is chewing on the things!

Dennis and Greg.  Some of the stuff in front of Dennis is stuff he is giving away, or selling at a modest price.  Folks that are new to robots that need some hardware to get started with, be sure to attend a meeting.  Dennis may be able to help you out and reduce clutter at his home!

Lots of the stuff are Basic Stamp processors, and development boards such as this one.

Dennis is also moving rapidly on the new Enhanced Sumo contest.  Here are his very high quality planetary gear box motors.  The plan is to make a pyramid shaped robot using 4 motors and wheels for propulsion.  A fellow member is planning to help out by machining some adapter hubs to go from the motor shafts to the small model airplane wheels.

Sumo battles, always a necessary part of every meeting!  Here Greg's brass wedge is about to be fooled by Ed's flags.  It worked a few times but Greg's still came out the winner!

Here the Bad Brass Wedge is showing a Brainless robot the door!

The meetings start at noon and usually wrap up around 3:00 to 4:00.  This time around we seem to have a lot to talk about, such things as hardware design the new contest and the 'art' of programing style.  It was a great time as usual, with folks leaveing around 4:30.  Where else could you have a Geek get together, with lots of robots, food and beer?!

Next meeting is September 15, at Avos and of course the usual Hack meetings every Wednesday at Hobby Town.  See you there!