Creativity

After weeks of working on my small sumo robot, I got nowhere because I did not know what I was doing. I got the code imported into my Arduino, built a small box, and connected all the components together but I could just not get the robot itself to work. At this point I was lost and did not what to do. The activity is coming to an end in about 4 weeks which was not enough time to get our robots working. I was not the only one struggling with building our robots, actually, everyone was at the same stage where I was: Everything put together but everything was not working. For sessions upon sessions, we got nowhere, doing nothing because we had no idea what to do until 2 weeks left in the activity our supervisor, Mr. Weaver, gave us a simple programmable and modular robotics kit which we would build. This kit was really simple to build and relatively simple to code compared to starting from scratch. It came with its own software, its own application on your mobile device and it worked.

As seen above, the two videos shows the simplicity of the robotics kit which we used which then we would play with for the remaining sessions. By then it was too late and the season was over. Not much happened afterwards, we gave back the components which we used for our initial sumo robot which none of us were able to make functional, and we went away with our tiny robot which we use for random things like driving around our desk when we’re bored.

If anything, this activity was fun. I have always been interested in robotics and building things since a young age, and this activity was something which reflected that. Even though I was not able to create a functional Sumo Robot from scratch, I was still able to create a small programmable robot which was more fun as it actually worked.

Personally I want to go into engineering, whichever engineering course I take, I will still be building something which I love to do. With the many things I have learnt in this activity, I was even able to learn how to build my own keyboard which I am using to type this reflection right now. As time goes on, I will continue to build things and my next project is to build my own computer which will be used for playing videogames, editing my short films and productivity work.

Expectation:

Going into Sumo Robotics, I was expecting a kit that we would be given, build the kit then make modifications that would help us in the sumo ring. Thinking that this activity was going to be easy that it would be something I could easily breeze through.

Reality:

Something I was not expecting was learning the basics of coding. We had to completely make the Sumo Robot from scratch, something which was completely new to me. As a child, I was always interested in building robots, legos, and figures but most of them were fairly simple. In this activity, we were given an Arduino (brain – where the code goes) and a pair of servos. We were expected to build a small 10cm by 10cm sumo robot by the end of the 2 seasons and I had absolutely no idea where to start.

How I was able to Overcome the Challenges:

I was previously a DT: Systems and Controls student which was a 2-year course in IGCSE which specialized in Electronics, Structures, and Mechanisms of Design Technology. Coming into this, I had no previous knowledge of how to code or how to read code, therefore, I had to learn the very basics of coding so I could build the robot. When I was learning how to code, I asked for help from our supervisors and we found a code online for free which was easy to read and understand. Using that I was able to just make some small edits to control my servos and to the sensitivity of my sensor.

Now the real challenge of it all was building the body of the robot itself. Prototyping has always been something I have not been great at so I wanted to work on that purely visualize what my final product was going to look like, and practice working with card/cardboard for prototyping.