I Need A Robot

[imasupergeekjesusfreak]

My classmate needs a robot kit for the "Science Olympiad" and I've run out of places to shop

Here's what we need:
It has to be buildable, so no robosabian
It has to be able to pick up and throw a ping pong ball and pick up ten pennies.
It can't be touched directly by the controller, but wireless is allowed.


PLEASE HELP

 

[Biotechnologist]

Woo! Division C - Robot Ramble!

By the sounds of it, you are all going to buy a pre-made robot and modify it?

Just some ideas -

For the ten pennies, I was thinking about maybe a roomba robot, and just hook it up to a wireless remote so that it can be stored. Just drive over the pennies and they are up.

The tennis ball is a little tricky. I wonder if with the roomba, if you make a outer shell with like a snow shovel front, and run little conveyors up the sides of the snow shovel so that when it hits the ping pong ball, it will get squeezed by the two conveyors on the side and go up to the top, and then just have a little pneumatic ram up there that with the push of a trigger will pump and send the ping pong ball into the air.

So, price list would be:

Roomba - $100
Remote, and all the stuff to hook it up - $150
Two little conveyors with two DC motors - $50
And a pneumatic cylinder with a little mini airtank - $75
Metal for the outer armor - $50

So, about $425 at the high-end.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I like robots.

If your looking for a whole kit that you all just bolt together and it does all of those things, I don't know even where to begin. Sorry.

 

[anteloperunner]

http://www.vexlabs.com/

Try this. You can build pretty much anything you want out of them. I recently built a prototype for a robot that could shoot ping-pong balls at people. We use these to prototype before spending the money for our big 130 pound version.