Search For a Robot

This was really interesting, a few weeks long brainstorming that went through quite a few different web sites and videos.

Main considerations we started with were:

simple, four wheels, tank steering robots are boring

four (or more) independent steered wheels we've already done on previous PiWars

legs are different to wheels

Relatively early we got to the point where we had to choose 'What To Build'! My idea was to go big, bold and something that really pushes the envelope of simple PiWars competition, while Pal seemed more reasonable. So, ideas to make anti-gravity robot, single wheel or a ball robot were very quickly discarded. With legs we had the options to go with two legs, four legs or more.

There are so many robots with legs to see, so many concepts to consider and it sparked quite a few wonderful and interesting ideas. Mostly crazy and unachievable ones but starting a project from scratch without any prejudice about what to create made the process-starting effort very attractive and exciting. Pal and I spent several sessions on Slack (offline and online with face to face chats) and exchanged loads of emails with eager smiles and subjects that are close to: "What About This One?!"

What To Build

My previous idea (see previous blog post) to make proper arachnid seemed a bit too much for the small arena of PiWars. That narrowed down the choices to only two options - two legs or four legs.

And this is where proper brainstorming and pro/con board came into the play. My reasoning was that PiWars already saw nice dog alike robot Spot Puppy and it wouldn't be innovative enough to go down that route, while Pal's reasoning was that two legs is much harder to achieve. And I agreed with him... That way we started with a four legged robot journey.

Many Robots of the Internet

This is a subset of some links we shared between us to use for inspiration. There are so many different and interesting projects published on the internet and it would really be a shame not doing proper 'homework' and see what is there so we can see where our efforts for innovation can be put given our abilities and amount of time we can invest in building the next PiWars robot.