Movement and design

Just some thoughts.

Our robot needs to be able to move both on the x axis and the y axis in order to be able to go through the whole board. It would optimally be able to move diagonally but it’s not required.

It could either be sort of an independent vehicle that moves on the board (1), or it could move over the board, suspended on some structure (2).

(1) Would require cells to be quite separate, so that the robot can move among them without touching/moving them. Diagonal movement isn’t that simple to achieve. Actually, having both horizontal and vertical movement isn’t that easy to achieve either… you either need some sort of wheels that can change the direction they are facing, or have both wheels pointing horizontally and vertically, and activate only the ones needed… not too fond on that.

(2) Sort of the same system they use on these things.
A friend of mine made a checkers bot some time ago, and he used that scheme, you can take a look at his robot (youtube video) here.

Option (2) is the one I will vote for. =P
(Note how it uses electromagnets to pick pieces, too. Our robot should behave similarly in that aspect aswell.)