Robot Club Line Following

David stomps everyone in the line following competition

SHARC, the local robot club I attend, has become re-invigorated and will be meeting monthly with line following competitions at the end of every meeting.

Our first new meeting was quite a success with good attendance, The line following was fun to watch, however I didn't have any of my line followers ready. Time to enter the fray!

Line Follower Robots

I have a few options to choose from for next month's competition.

Microrobot Cruiser

My first real robot was a line follower (and maze solver), a Microrobot Cruiser. It uses a 10-pin AVRISP programming header and features an ATmega8 processor and two Sanyo LB1368 motor drivers for the two motors. Oddly enough I never used it beyond some initial obstacle avoidance tests.

Carve, my AFRON robot entry

If you've been reading awhile you may recall my AFRON "$10" robot, "Carve". It's an ATmega328P-based robot with a single very cheap drive motor, a cheap servo, and a skateboard truck for rear steering. It's not all that agile for line following but it's fun.

Pololu 3pi (picture: pololu.com)

I also purchased a Pololu 3pi a couple years ago during one of their black Friday specials. It's supposed to be very fast. I wouldn't know; it's still in the original box. Robot competitions are always a great excuse to play with new robots.

Line Follower Tiles

For practice, I'm using tiles from robotsquare.com affixed to cheap dollar store foam core.

To Be Continued

I'll post with my choice and some details about the build up (or programming)