Robot Competition in Varna

I just got back from Varna, a town on the seaside of Bulgaria. I was there on a robotics competition with my team and my classmates and we were playing Robot Football. You can watch the official video here: Robot Football Varna (The audio is Bulgarian.) More about the robots and the competition in the full article.

NoMercy(My team):

At first I was using 4×1,5 V batteries for the motors and 4 other for the Arduino. The speed was quite low so I decided to take the batteries from my laser ,stick them together and get around 2,4Ah at 7,8V . Also they were used to push the enemy robots away so I can easily steal the ball. The communication was established by two Xbee Series 1 modules and the motors were driven with the L293B chip.

Barbie(Asen’s team):

From its creator: “Barbi” …hmm Barbi was a little white PVC robot forgotten by everybody, so i decided take care of it. When we were on the train to Varna he came in a box from an electric water pot. Everyone’s first impression was “OMG, an electric water pot?!” But when i made the homo smile everybody realized that something was wrong… Everyone screamed “Come on, show us Barbi! Show us!” I  opened the box and took the white robot, but it was no ordinary machine – pink & red with a Barbie face on it! And that’s how the name came from – “Barbi” – the only girl in our teams!
P.S. No homo, also It was a huge humiliation when Barbie kept the enemy robots in the corner!

Putin(Bobi’s team):

From its creator: When we got the tanky robot, it was made of one big breadboard, tape all over it and some kind of styrofoam.
After we created the software part and “Putin” was able to move, we decided to make a more stable construction.
The new version was made of metal plates and a small breadboard for the motor controller (L293DN).
About 1 hour before the game we discovered that the robot is too heavy and because of that – slow.
Then Stefan(vastly11) proposed the idea to add 1 more 1.5V battery, which was great, because it allowed the robot to be more aggresive in the field and therefore win the match.

*This robot was named (Vladimir)Putin because it was 140% effective!