Harder than we expected?

It’s taking us a bit to get started.

We first thought about using Lego NXT, but oh well, we don’t really have direct access to one (even though they have some at the University but hmm…) and they are expensive, way too expensive for our limited budget. =P

So now we are going to try to go the cheap way. That means using microcontrollers (I personally hadn’t used one before, and neither had my friends…).

We found some sort of good introduction tutorial for Atmel ATtiny2313, and there’s where we’ll start. Soon (quite a few exams arriving, oh no!).

So what problems will we have to face? Many. Some of them are:

• Movement
• Piece detection
• Piece picking and dropping

About movement, well, we want it to be able to move both on the x and y axis, so that it can easily go through the entire board (first for an analysis of which pieces are given as initial data, and then to pick and drop the appropiate pieces on the adequate locations).

Piece detection? We want the robot to know what number the piece below it represents. We are thinking about using cromatic sensors.

Piece picking and dropping: we could have the robot physically grab pieces, or we could use an electromagnet.

I’ll elaborate more on those topics in future posts.

It’s cool that we are finding some support. Actually, whenever we tell someone about the project, they want to help. Guess it’s a charismatic robot, ours (at least in our imagination, wahey!). But really, there are a couple of guys that will be of great help, I’m sure. ^^