this is the basis for my new robot design. I've place the wheels further forward to solve a balancing issue, but this will limit the ability for the IRseekerV2 to find the ball behind the robot. i'm not worried about this in the slightest, as it actually solves a twitching issue due to the seeker values of 1 and 9 (behind the sensor). this robot uses a single omni wheel placed at a 90degree angle to the wheels as a stabilizing, which should solve any jumping/bouncing issues that occurred due to using a slider.

this robot will be constructed on 3mm plywood, and unlike the previous models, the lego will be constructed to be inline with it self, causing no warping of the robot, increasing it's rigidity. the NXT will be place forward, over the driving wheels to increase the traction of the front wheels. i'll also be using a RCX motor to create a back spinner for ball control.

blue tooth troubles

I believe that my new design will prove most effective. Though it does not utilize Omni-directional wheels and the cosine function to move, it does take the speed and traction of 2 normal wheels, stabilised with an Omni wheel. This, combined with a back spinner means that robot can take control of the ball.

The logic for the blue tooth communication is simple- I will program the robots to find the neutral zone lines on the field and drive along them. If the robot detects that it’s motors are ramping up (and thus, the ball is being challenged by a second robot), it will call it’s team mate to move up the other neutral zone line, where the first robot will act to pass the ball across the goal.

In practice however, the programming is not that simple. While this idea takes comes to fruition through the creation of near identical robots, putting it into practice is slightly more difficult. First I need to come up with a way of getting the compass sensor working. This is a difficult tasked with a 2 wheel design, as it means fancy manoeuvring around the ball, which can be very time consuming. What I’m thinking is instead of that, have a tag team approach. Have one robot in the goal at all times, and when a robot is facing the wrong direction, it alerts the defending robot to the position of the ball, then retreats to take over.

This can only come through proper testing, so we’ll see how well it goes.