After 6 weeks of long nights, scratching heads and bashing metal we are pleased to announce that our robot and minibot, named David and Goliath respectively, have been completed and have shipped.

The main Robot, David (Dave for short), is equipped with an arm combined with a pneumatic grabber that is capable of picking up game pieces from the ground and placing them on any of the pegs on the first two rows. Equipped with mechanum wheels, the robot is fast and very maneuverable. On board sensors allow for sophisticated autonomous operation of the robot at the start of competition games, with the facility to deploy the minibot (Goliath) at any time on the designated pole in the arena.

Tests of the robots drive, arm and grabber, and minibot deployment took place yesterday. Despite initially having some issues with the new drive code and the motors, the drive system now appears to be working well. The arm and grabber have proved very effective at placing game pieces on our sample pegs. The minibot still has some minor and easily fixed issues with disabling itself at the top of the pole, which we are confident can be rectified before the competition.