Nano Sumo Robot Takes On All Comers

nano_sumo_bot

While most Sumo-style robots are fairly sizable, there is a subsection of the Sumo robot movement that focuses on making small robots. Really small robots.

[Patrick] wrote in to share his latest creation, a Nano Sumo robot measuring a scant 1 in. x 1 in. The Nano Sumo is operated by an ATMega 328 micro controller housed on a custom-built PCB. The board was designed to interface directly with the 1A Dual Motor Driver from SparkFun, which provides all of the PWM signaling to the motors for speed control and braking. A small 50mAh Li-poly battery is attached to the robot, which can be charged using 4 AA batteries via a custom charging circuit. The mechanical components of the bot were handled by his friend [Gary], which you can read about here.

As you can see in the video below, the bot does its job pretty well. It does seem like the object detection gets confused every once in awhile, but that can likely be remedied with a few software tweaks.

Check out his page for additional build videos, including the PCB construction and programming processes.

If you’re interested in learning more about Sumo bots, check out this slightly larger robot we covered a short while back.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-5aRlMBRvE&w=470]

10 thoughts on “Nano Sumo Robot Takes On All Comers

  1. Just watching the video, I think the reason it has trouble sometimes is because the center of gravity is in just the wrong spot. If it were a little shorter or a little longer it would be more stable, so that when it accelerates it doesn’t pop a wheelie and therefore the circle detection sensors don’t misfire.

  2. This is rather cool, but I have two negative things to say.

    1. the video is 4 minutes too long.

    2. “Made on a Mac” graphic with hyperlink to apple.com/mac … why don’t you try to be a bit more of a douchebag?

    Otherwise I thought the robot was cool because of it’s size and how well it worked.
    Fuck those paper cubes.

  3. @Scott

    I’m fairly certain the the “Made on a Mac” is placed automatically when using iWeb (apples web authoring software) – the same way the iPhone automatically signs emails “sent from my iPhone” so it probably wasn’t the pompous move that it appears.

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.