The Sports Bot was a purely functional autonomous robot built with a focus on electronic integration (not aesthetics).
Clockwise from top left: Sports Bot in its glory, servo-driven chip-throwing arms (on/off robot), line following and 'beacon' frequency sensors at front of bot, electric power delivery and electric motor drive assembly, Arduino controller and other circuitry
As a team of four in ME210: Intro to Mechatronics, we made a robot that autonomously navigated a playing field using beacon detection and line-following to find 'buckets' and throw poker chips into them using its servo-actuated arms. The buckets were located with LED 'beacons' that flashed at a prescribed frequency, and the bot used a combination of line-following and beacon 'sensing' to navigate the field. The Sports Bot was built primarily from laser-cut and 3D printed parts, and was supported by three wheels, two driven skateboard wheels, and one caster. It used three different soldered circuits: one for voltage regulation and motor power, one for tape-sensing phototransistors, and another for the beacon-sensing phototransistor. The bot was controlled by an Arduino Uno.