University of Waterloo's robotics team
http://uwrobotics.uwaterloo.ca/sumo is holding a mini sumo competition, each team pays $50 for entrance fee, and they provide us with sheet aluminum and a lot of other stuff like the Sharp IR range sensors (4 to 30 cm version) and IR line sensors (
http://www.solarbotics.com/products/qrd1114/ ). They give each team a PIC controller board with motor drivers and stuff but my team chose to use an ATMega168 instead because we have our own programmer.
The robot is meant to start standing up, do a quick reverse to drop down, this circumvents the size restrictions. There is a little adjustable kickstand in the back to allow us to change it's starting angle. A lot of the other teams don't seem to understand that there are no height limits in mini sumo. We are still working on the behaviour of the robot.
The motors are Faulhaber gear motors like the ones here
http://www.robotroom.com/FaulhaberGearmotor.html , the wheels are Banebots
http://banebots.com/c/WHB and we drilled a hole into the aluminum hub to join it with the motor's output gear. The controller board is just a prototyping board with a ATMega168, the motor drivers are Toshiba TA8050P. The sensors are pointed parallel with the ground and spread at 60 degrees.
This is my first time working with metal, I am very pleased with how it turned out, using sheet metal brakes, benders, and punches is very satisfying. The robotics team gives all the teams tutorial sessions on using Solidworks, soldering, and programming. Too bad the competition overlaps with the CNRG or else we would enter both.
Prize is $250, wish us luck!