Design and development of an autonomous sumo robot

• Main Author: Saw, Han Beng.
• Other Authors: Heng Kok Hui, John Gerard
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Robots
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/40147
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aim of this project is to design and develop an autonomous sumo robot for the purpose of fulfilling an educational experience and to compete in the Singapore Robotic Games 2010. An autonomous sumo robot is able to have a match with another sumo robot without continuous human guidance. It is expected to deploy offensive or defensive movements in response to movements from the opponent with an ultimate intention to win via pushing opponent out of the ring. There are three main stages in the overall design and development process of the sumo robot. Stage one is the concept and detailed design development. The objective of stage one is to select the best and viable design that has the highest probability of winning a match. Stage two is fabrication, which is to convert previously planned parts into tangible parts for full assembly purposes. In this stage, majority of mechanical plus electrical parts were fabricated and assembled by the author. Finally, the last stage is to test the sumo robot and perform necessary improvements to ensure that all intended functions are working properly. There are two types of existing autonomous sumo robots. They are the high-speed type and high-torque type regardless of overall geometrical arrangement of the chassis. The most successful sumo robots focus on combining the speed and torque with a wedge angle vehicle design in order to achieve supremacy in a match. Since this project has limited resources and time, the author decided to build a sumo robot from low cost parts for chassis and shift the majority of the budget to focus on the electronic parts to achieve optimum performance.