Pi Wars 2018 – Team Formation

So, earlier in the year Medway Makers decided we would form a team to enter the Pi Wars competition in 2018. Mike McRoberts gathered a bunch of people who expressed an interest at one of the regular Medway Makers meetings.On that day there were 7 people who wanted to be part of the team. Since the we have had several meetings to work on and plan the Pi Wars robot and unfortunately only two people keep turning up; Tom Sparrow and Mike McRoberts. So, the team is now a two person team. Despite it being only two people, those two people are very enthusiastic and have the skills and necessary to design and build a great Pi Wars robot. We also now have Mike’s 3D Printer at our disposal and so can print bespoke parts if required.

Without knowing what the 2018 challenges were going to be, we decided we would design a robot capable of tackling the 2017 challenges, as at least then it would require fairly minor (hopefully) changes to the design once the challenges were announced. We decided on a mid sized chassis and four wheels. We discussed tracks and six wheels but decided that 4 wheels seemed to be popular on the majority of successful Pi Wars robots and was therefore an obvious choice. It also kept cost and complexity to a minimum.

We have, since then, tried out various wheel and tyre combinations, as well as several motor controller boards and batteries. We seem to have a good combination of battery and motor controller now, but would like to try out a few more wheel and tyre designs, perhaps 3D printed versions.

The chassis will, I am sure, go through several more iterations before we are happy with it and then there are the design and coding challenges we will face once we know what we are up against in the 2018 competition. Watch this space as we discuss our progress in designing and building this robot.