Before building our final project, the battle bot, we practiced creating other robots that focused on individual concepts in robotics, with each robot with different skills.

• The Tamiya Bot helped us learn the basics on how to assemble a robot mechanically, motor control, and very simple mechanisms in driving. It also helped us observe what makes a suitable, stable robot base/frame.

• The SparkFun Robot introduced microcontroller programming and modular components. It was mainly made up of breadboards, wiring, and integrating code with hardware, which was useful for personalizing our final project.

• The Zumi Bot showed us what autonomous navigation, sensor integration, and basic coding logic is, while also helping us understand how decision making systems work.

• The Line Follower Bot improved our skills in sensor feedback and the workings of control loops, which are important when it came to precise movement and navigation in path-following courses.

• The AI Humanoid Robot was a bit more advanced as it was quite challenging. It combined image recognition, facial detection, basically we learned how AI behavior operates, which is useful if we wanted to include these features into our robot. 

After trying out all these different robots it helped us get a better grasp of how mechanical design, coding, sensors, and electronics would be incorporated into our design later on. Through this new found information with our experiences, we can hopefully build a battle bot that has a good balance of durability, speed, flexibility, and maybe offensive parts to it as well. Because of these activities we can combine everything we learned as a group and effectively prepare a suitable bot for our final design.