I recently received the email from Piwars reminding us that the end is in sight. “Thanks Mike and Tim!”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it certainly gave me that same warm fuzzy feeling inside that you get when you wake up knowing you are late for work!

Where are we with our robot? Well, that is a very good question. We meet as a group at least twice a week to push the project forward, but we also use our evenings and weekends as well. Although we did get stuck with EM interference issues for a good couple of weeks, we have now recovered from that and made a huge surge forward with getting TITO 2 ready for the impending challenges.

• TITO 2 , although still in prototype mode, has now successfully and repeatedly navigated our mock up of the Minimal Maze. Seeing it do this really helped me believe that we will get it ready in time.
• We also have tested TITO 2 on the straight line speed track, however not at full speed…not even close. I’d like to get a few more runs at this to dial in our tweaks so that it doesn’t touch the sides.
• Our RC mode has also been tested (to the dismay of Mark who very kindly spent at least 40 hours 3D printing the shell). We know that it at least works in this configuration, but there are some significant improvements to be made, as the general consensus is that it is “a little twitchy”. That and the tank steering mode has made it nearly undriveable to all but experts (ie Mark).
• Line following has hit a snag. Our sensor board is clearly suffering an injury of some sort and so we may have to fall back to OpenCV and a Pi Camera. As we have little to no code for this yet, I’m not even slightly concerned………
• Slightly Deranged Golf is basically RC mode with a ball moving attachment. This attachment is yet to be added to the bot but has been tested in prototype stage.
• Pi Noon is again basically RC mode. Once we’ve sorted the steering and throttle issues, I’m sure we will have this pegged!
• Skittles. This one always fills me with joy. We have made progress and have a prototype that will actually do this. I mean, it’s not tested in any way shape or form. But surely that’s just minor details?

Here are a few short videos showing off what we have accomplished so far.

So, after checking back in with you I hope you can see that we are moving forward!

• Posted to Pi Wars, Pi Wars Old, Raspberry Pi on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2017 at 10:53 pm
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