PacBot - Four Weeks Out

03 Apr 2018

As of this writing, there are 25 days left until the PacBot competition, which means that it’s crunch time for the PacBot committee!

Last week we managed to get our robot, Buster, driving:

Since then we’ve been frantically working to get all of Buster’s subsystems and feedback mechanisms finished and at the same time working on Buster v2 and our game playing software.

Here’s what we’re working on right now:

On the systems side we’re working to read gyro and accelerometer data from our IMU, properly read positional data from our encoders, and interface with our distance sensors. Ultimately, the goal is to use the multiple feedback mechanisms that we have at our disposal to effectively navigate the field.

On the electrical side we’re working on using some smaller motor controllers as well as creating a PCB for our electrical components (as much as we love the rats-nest of wires aesthetic, we can and should do better).

For software, we’re working to get our game playing component’s framework completed.

A lot of our plans are still in flux so we’re short on details at the moment, but expect some detailed process style blog posts in a couple of weeks.

Visit us!

If any of the above sounds interesting come check us out. You can find us at one of our meetings (Wednesdays, 7 to 8PM or Saturdays, 4 to 7PM; EER 0.822) or you can talk to us on the #pacbot slack channel.

Finally:

Happy building!

Author: Rahul Butani

---