We’ve had several people ask us about our favorite sumobot by the folks at Pololu. Although they sell models that are fully assembled we prefer to build ours from their kit. Here’s an overview of what we use.
What is a Zumobot:
Pololu makes kit, called Zumobot, that combines an Arduino shield with a small plastic chassis to house the motors and electronics. The shield works with a standard Arduino Uno board. The shield includes a built in motor controller as well as an acceleromter and compass. It also has an area to connect a sensor array. The sensor array makes it great for detecting lines.
What makes a good kit is not just the hardware, but the making it easy to program. Since the kit uses a Arduino UNO compatible shield, it uses the popular Arduino programming environment. Anyone familiar with Arduino will find it easy to use the software. And for those new to Arduino there are great instructional resources, blogs, youtube videos, books, etc. Pololu provides the necessary software libraries to make controlling the robot. Adding the library gives access to sumo bot examples they have written that can be downloaded without any additional coding. This is why it is one of our favorites. By following the instructions on assembling the Zumobot shield, chassis and sensor array, someone can have a sumobot up and running in an afternoon.
Parts list:
1 x Zumo Robot Kit for Arduino, v1.2 (No Motors) #2509 , https://www.pololu.com/product/2509, $42.95
1 x Zumo Reflectance Sensor Array #1419, https://www.pololu.com/product/1419, $9.95
2 x 50:1 Micro Metal Gearmotor HP 6V #998, https://www.pololu.com/product/998, $15.95
1 x Arduino UNO Rev3, https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/a000066, $24.95
To connect to the Arduino board you need a USB 2.0 A-Male to B-Male cable. If you don’t have one from one of your old printers, you can get one on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-USB-2-0-Cable-Male/dp/B00NH11KIK/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1488946861&sr=1-1&keywords=AmazonBasics+USB+2.0+Cable+-+A-Male+to+B-Male
To hold your own competition need a sumo wresting ring, dohyo. You can easily make one with some wood and paint.
http://robogames.net/rules/all-sumo.php
Another approach which we use is to buy a paper one from Parallax.
https://www.parallax.com/product/27404
Assembly:
The instructions from Pololu are thorough. https://www.pololu.com/docs/0J57
Note that soldering is required. We hope to have a how-to video in the future, so check back in the coming months.
Programming:
Pololu provides a library for the Zumobot shield. It includes several examples. ZumoMotorExample is very useful to test out the motors are connected properly. For a basic competition just the BorderDetect example. You can experiment changing the speed and duration variables in the program to find a combination you want to compete with. There is also an example that uses the onboard accelerometer to speed up on an impact, SumoCollisionDetect . Which will either mean you run away faster or push the opponent faster. There are other examples available on the internet but the BorderDetect and SumoCollisionDetect programs are usually enough to have a strong showing in the competition.
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