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!

↓ Pictures included ↓

It is based on the ATmega 1280 microcontroller chip. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 14 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.

Summary:

It uses a EM-411 GPS module, a 2×16 LiquidCrystal display, a protoshield and of course and Arduino.
The navigation in the menu is done by two buttons – Down and Select. If you are in a mode (ex. ‘SAT status’), the Down button acts as Back.

SAT status – This mode has two screens, changing every two seconds and refreshing every one second. The first screen shows your current coordinates, your speed(kmph) and a clock. The second one shows the number of satellites used, fix type (N/A,2D,3D) ,the altitude(meters) and the current heading(degrees).

As you see in the photos there is a Waypoint Mode. It is not ready yet, so it’s just staying in the menu for now.
*Update: The waypoint mode is working now ,see this post for more.

System cold start: 40sec – 1min
System hot start: 2-5sec

Power supply: 9V

GPS Datasheet

The parts used in it are:

1. Arduino Duemilanove
2. Protoshield with small breadboard
3. PING sensor
4. LCD 2×16
5. Two continuous  rotating servos w/ two wheels
6. A breadboard
7. A knob
8. Parallax BoeBot chassis
9. 9V battery with cable

Here is the final autonomous robot: (I’m going to upload a video of it in action soon.)

Source Code: Download

Fell free to share and comment!

Here, I am going to post every project I work on and provide you with photos and videos of the current progress.

Enjoy!