SumoBot Modified Code out there?

George Sutton

I know folks don't usually want to give away their secrets when it comes to competition, but I would be interested in any tips, tricks, or modified code for the SumoBot. I have the Sumobot Competition Kit, and while I won't be competing anywhere, I would like to play around with the code and learn from it, and maybe teach my kids some additional sumobot fighting skills. Thanks for any pointers, strategies, or code snippets.

KeithE

I don't have any code to share right now, but here's a potential item of interest. If you get one of those ESP8266 modules, you can install it on the breadboarding area and use it to control the sumobot. There's an android app called roboremo that has a free version which is good enough to build simple GUIs for two servo control. (I tried two sliders for tank style control, and also tried the accelerometer with an approach similar to the app note that parallax published.) Then you can have one sumobot in autonomous mode, and one remote controlled. This could be useful for either holding the kids interest, or for testing out your autonomous code against a very capable human opponent. You could use other RC systems, but these ESP8266s are so cheap that it seems like a good approach if you have an android phone and don't already have an alternate RC system.

You could code the robot logic on the esp8266 as well if you want. I find the basicstamp to be pretty frustrating since you have to effectively count cycles to get the servo timing right. (Is this what inspired the propeller? Am I doing it wrong?)

George Sutton

Interesting... I have spent several hours looking at ESP8266 boards today! They are indeed neat and low cost. I may just have to get one (or two...) and play around a bit. Thanks for the reply.

Jonathan

George,

Haven't played with sumobots in some years. I'll look and see if I can locate some code. I also switched over to a Prop for the brain, not sure what yours use.

One thing we did that worked well was adding a tilt switch. We found that often when one was being shoved out of the ring it would get lifted up. If the tilt was detected, the bot did a back up/turn move that was pretty effective. We also added better sensors for opponent detection. Physically we modified them to change the center of balance so that there was more weight on the scoop. We also made scoops that were better at getting under an opponents scoop.

Jonathan

George Sutton

Jonathan wrote: »

George,

Haven't played with sumobots in some years. I'll look and see if I can locate some code. I also switched over to a Prop for the brain, not sure what yours use.

One thing we did that worked well was adding a tilt switch. We found that often when one was being shoved out of the ring it would get lifted up. If the tilt was detected, the bot did a back up/turn move that was pretty effective. We also added better sensors for opponent detection. Physically we modified them to change the center of balance so that there was more weight on the scoop. We also made scoops that were better at getting under an opponents scoop.

Jonathan

Jonathan,

Thanks for the reply. My sumobots are stock Stamp. I bet you can do lots of neat stuff with a Propeller on one of these things. I really like the idea of a tilt sensor... I have one and it should be easy to implement. I had not thought of that before. Different scoop design... again, never even thought of that. Thanks for the ideas.

Courtney Jacobs

George,

Parallax uses a variation on the XBee SumoBot Tilt-Controller project for our in-house SumoBot demos. They're fun and visitors really like navigating (and battling) with the robots wirelessly using tilt-controllers.

You can check out the project here: http://learn.parallax.com/tutorials/projects/xbee-sumobot-tilt-controller

Publison

That's cool Courtney! Never saw that.

KeithE

Roboremo (http://www.roboremo.com) has support for smartphone accelerometers, and you can use the approach given in that parallax tilt-controller project on the embedded side to convert to servo control. Depending on what you already have (e.g. android smartphone/tablet and esp8266) you can get going quite quickly and affordably. You can also try alternate control schemes such as having tank style controls - separate slider for each servo. My kids actually liked the tank style better.

George Sutton

Thanks Courtney, Publison, and KeithE! See why these fora are the best ever?

George Sutton

Has anyone had any interesting strategies or ideas that could be shared regarding SumoBots and competition among, say, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or neighborhood groups? Anything beyond what is presented in the Parallax manuals would be most welcomed. Thank you.

KeithE

I posted some information about remote controlling Parallax SumoBot's with BBC Micro:bits in another thread. It's inspired by the xbee project posted above, and perhaps ties in with Parallax's work on blocklyprop. Unfortunately building an autonomous Sumo:bot with the Micro:bit would take a bit more work due to the limited # of I/O pins and required voltage conversion. You would probably need to go through I2C or SPI.

Pictures on P1 and link to project on P3

http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/166987/another-new-chip-bbc-micro-bit-go/p1
http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/166987/another-new-chip-bbc-micro-bit-go/p3

Anyways I think that having at least one remote controlled bot would help in the testing of an autonomous bot.

George Sutton

Thank you for the links and for your comments. Very interesting and you have me wanting to learn more. Thanks again!