This project was one of the most important project that I have done, because it was my first approach to robotics. Since this project I have chosen subjects at University that would help me to develop better robots. Besides I was part of the first robotic team of the university.

This project explore the design and programming of a robot using Arduino for the Robotics Competition of the Federico Santa María Technical University, held in Valparaiso, Chile.

As I mentioned before, our University did not have a robotic team; thus this can be considered the first team of our University that assisted to a robotic competition.

Members:

• Ricardo Pino, Mechanical Engineer Student from the University of Concepcion.

• Roberto Riquelme, Electronic Engineer Student from the University of Concepcion.

• Camilo Salazar, Electronic Engineer Student from the University of Concepcion.

• Pablo Vela, Electronic Engineer Student from the University of Concepcion.

This year's competition is inspired by firefighting and the brave firefighters who have given their lives to protect the community. There will be 4 stages that will have to be overcome in the following sequence: dispatch, displacement, exploration and rescue. Each stage has its own stage, objectives and rules. Competitors will have to give their all to be able to pass as many stages as possible.

For each unlocked stage, the participant will receive a reward according to the difficulty of the test and will be able to participate in the next stage according to the order established above.

To overcome each stage, the each team will have at least 2 opportunities (the total number will be regulated based on the number of participating teams). 

As it was our first robot we decided to keep it simple and avoid complicated designs or micro-controllers, so in case that adjustments were needed it could be done fast. We designed the robot using Autodesk Inventor and performed several iterations until we got our final design.

The hardware used was:

• 1 Arduino Leonardo.

• 2 Servo Motors.

• 4 QRD1114 Sensors.

• 1 Sharp IR Sensor.

• 1 Enconder.

During the construction phase we had to make some modifications to the original design, solder the sensor and cables. Programming was quite straight forward, we decided to code one program for each stage, so it would be easy to debug and adapt it if it was necessary.

Even if we did not achieve a podium position we learn a lot and have a lot of fun meanwhile developing this project. We felt very proud because we built our first robot from scratch and we were able to reach the stage 3 of the competition, although it was our first time in a robotic competition.

• Arduino files

• GitHub