I spent about twenty minutes earlier today with a needle file, carefully and patiently filing away part of a hard metal battery terminal that I’d inadvertently epoxied oh so very slightly too high, such that it was blocking the little tab meant to fit in that hole and keeping me from reattaching the black plastic battery cover of my new Zumo robot. In the photo above you can see that tiny bit of metal peeking up through the hole, with that bit of black plastic to the left less than a millimeter thick. Very fragile polystyrene plastic. One slip and I’d break it.
I’d already filed away some plastic to leave space for the battery wires to exit the battery compartment, which normally fits snug against the PC board. Normally one would just solder the battery terminals directly to the PC board, meaning: permanent connections. I have been avoiding permanent connections. This is not a reflection on my private life, just the Zumo.
To some degree this represents the end of my journey. For over a year now I’ve been searching for a “club robot”, that is, a starter robot with enough appeal for beginners but still with enough growth potential that it wouldn’t sit on the shelf either due to its owner losing interest in robotics or growing out of it into a more functional robot.
It’s a bit of a tall order. My requirements included:
- low cost: the overall cost of the project should be under NZ$200 (~US$145)
- easy to buy: use a hardware platform that if single-sourced would be from a reputable company with good support, or otherwise could be built from readily-available parts using a recipe
- easy to build: anyone should be able to build the robot using common mechanical skills and tools
- easy to modify: the robot should permit customisation, such as adding new sensors
- programmable in python: preferably programmable in Python rather than C/C++, since the latter’s difficulty and learning curve are significantly higher [one goal of my own robot journey was to learn Python]. Many single board computers and microcontrollers can be programmed in multiple languages; some, like the Arduino, only in C/C++
First Steps
My thoughts for a club robot first went to various small robots such as the MakeBlock mBot, which is an attractive option but targeted at primary school children. They’re simple robots often designed as part of a larger school learning programme. These would excel at the first three requirements but fail on the fourth and fifth. They’re advertised as an “entry-level” robot for beginners. Fair enough. But not for this club’s club robot.
The mBot uses a micro:bit, an inexpensive single board microcontroller designed by the BBC (yes, the British Broadcasting Service, that BBC). The one thing about the micro:bit that keeps it somewhat in the running is that it can be programmed using either of two different graphical user interfaces: Microsoft MakeCode or Scratch, or using an online tool that edits code in Python and downloads it to the micro:bit to execute.
Last year I’d helped some friends buy a micro:bit-based Waveshare Alphabot2 robot for their daughters, which after batteries and charger ended up north of NZ$250. It’s a nicely designed and manufactured robot but after purchasing the LiPo batteries and a safe battery charger, somewhat too expensive, and not expandable, kind of a fixed entity. There’s not even a place on the robot to attach any additional features. I haven’t asked lately if it’s gathering dust or if the eldest girl, who is now 11, has shown any ongoing interest in the robot. It seemed like a success at the time, but the whole exercise pointed out the likelihood that, without some guidance and mentoring, a lot of kids might feel a bit left adrift with what is a lot more than simply a toy.
But all three of the avenues for programming the micro:bit are very limited. It’s not the kind of tool set that would appeal much to a teenager, much less an adult, so it’s not really suitable as the processor for a club robot. So the AlphaBot with micro:bit was out, and its Arduino and Raspberry Pi brethren too, since the robot is not expandable and doesn’t have the ability to fit motor encoders or additional sensors.
The Zumo Sumo Robot
Then the idea of the Zumo robot came up, though it uses an Arduino, rather old-school and slow nowadays with its 16MHz ATmega32u4 processor, and only programmable in C/C++. That being said, there are numerous code libraries available in C/C++ for Robot Sumo competitions, line-following and many other challenges and techniques. It’s widely known and widely available, so it certainly qualifies as a viable club robot if I’m willing to give up the Python requirement. But I wasn’t, at least not initially.
The default Zumo Robot for Arduino consists of a chassis, the Arduino shield, a pair of motors, a stainless steel blade to push off combatants, and an optional array of infrared sensors to sense the black and white transition at the edge of the Sumo arena. You’d then add sensors to locate the opponent. If you build it exactly as according to that plan it’s a robot wiht a reasonable cost and reasonable build time.
But I wasn’t going to give up on programming it in Python so I also ordered some other parts that would permit me to swap out the Arduino shield for a Kiktronik Robotics Board for the Raspberry Pi Pico. The Pico can be programmed in C/C++ but also in MicroPython.
So I put together an order of Zumo parts from Pololu, as well as the Kiktronik/Pico parts from Pimoroni.
What seemed like a very long time later the packages had both arrived.
I’m myself pretty happy with working in Python and believe it’s a good job skill, and thought: I wouldn’t want to be tasked with teaching any kids C++. I don’t even like it as a language. So unless there’s some way to program a Zumo in Python it’s not in the running.
So why even bother?
I then remembered a conversation a few weeks’ back with David Anderson of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG), who in what I believe out of sincere curiosity had asked me: “Why are you bothering to try to start a club anyway? Why not simply build your own robots?” I had a nice pat answer about enjoying teaching people things and wanting to share some of the knowledge I’d gained over the years. But that question kinda lodged in my skull and has been festering there since then. It’s a good question.
I believe David explained his own motivation as simply wanting to build some great robots with the understanding that if people are interested they’ll be inspired by them and get involved in robotics. Lead by example. Seeing David’s robots in action were actually what spurred me to consider, after almost 40 years, to get back into robotics. David seems to be mostly interested in building robots, not trying to teach anyone or lead a group of people. It occurred to me that he’d also asked: “Why do you care if people are involved in robotics or not?” And he had me there. Why do I care? It’s not like I would benefit if more people built robots. There’s this idealistic notion that the world needs more engineers, and it’s a nice thought that I might inspire someone to take up engineering, but that’s pretty indirect. I’m not a school teacher, I don’t have any students. There are currently no NZPRG members except myself. I’m not even sure I even have the time to actually lead a local club. And I’m sure David would rightly say that all the time I’d spend running a club would be time taken away from doing the thing I actually enjoy doing, which is building robots.
My Customised Zumo
Today I finally finished the hardware of my Zumo. I could have simply built it according to the plans, which would likely have taken me less than an hour. But I was in my head exploring this idea that with suitable modifications it might suit as a club robot. There should be in how much time I’d invested an answer to the question of it posing as a possible club robot: absolutely no way. I wasn’t keeping track of the hours, but it was certainly more than an eight hour day’s work. Pretty silly.
The Zumo robot from Pololu comes in two forms: an already-assembled Zumo 32U4 Robot model and a Zumo Robot for Arduino. With the latter the robot effective plugs upside-down onto the top of an Arduino microcontroller as a shield, the common name for Arduino accessories. The 32U4 version actually has more features built-in, like a little LCD display, motor encoders and line-following sensors, whereas the shield is, in theory, more flexible. That theory turned out to be rather illusory.
But for the Arduino shield version that I’d built, I had to figure out how to add motor encoders, which aren’t part of the deal normally. The motors are held in their own small space in the chassis, with no holes even for the twelve wires to exit. Yeah, twelve wires. Each motor has positive and negative power, plus the four wires (A1, B1, A2, B2) for the encoder. The Pololu encoders come in three varieties, but only the bare board version would seem to fit into the space.
So where to go with twelve wires? If one is going to fit the infrared sensor array it can’t be forward, as the connector fits snugly against the front of the chassis. We can’t go up as that would run into the Arduino shield, nor back as that is the battery compartment. So it had to be down, though that is the ground. There’s a few millimeters of clearance between the bottom of the motor chamber and the actual bottom of the robot, so that’s it.
So I managed to find a way to connect the motors and encoders and route the wires up to the controller.
This also meant that the twelve wires and two battery connections (now a black and red wire) couldn’t be soldered to the Arduino shield either, I’d have to use Dupont connectors.
So… long story short, I ended up after many hours with an Arduino Leonardo atop the Pololu Zumo shield, all connected with a bunch of wires. The infrared array plugs very cleanly underneath the shield. But I’ve not yet added any ability for the robot to see Sumo opponents, like a pair of Sharp analog infrared sensors or an ultrasonic sensor.
The End
Yeah, also a song by The Doors. But having mostly-completed the hardware for this Zumo brought me to what had been that question at the back of my head all along: why am I doing this? It was all in mind of this “club robot” idea.
I have several much larger, more complicated robots that are outfitted with a Raspberry Pi and lots of sensors, and I’ve been happily programming them in Python. Over the past few years I’ve developed a fair bit of code in support of the hardware, and continue to work on that. Was I now going to start over in C++ on this Zumo? Really?
What would be perhaps an ideal platform for someone else now just felt like a burden. As I said earlier, I don’t even like programming in C++, and while there are available libraries for the Zumo, I’d be treading on territory others have passed through long ago. I’d be going from a robot with more than a dozen sensors to one where even adding a few is rather more difficult. Why would I do this?
What’s after The End?
So what’s next? Well, I could sell the Zumo. It’s perfectly functional and has motor encoders. There’s also the idea that I could swap out that Arduino shield for the Kiktronik Robotics Board and program the Raspberry Pi Pico in MicroPython.
I’d basically be putting the shield and the Leonardo in a plastic storage box and never looking at it again, which seems a bit of a waste. But this was an experiment, a thesis, and my thesis has borne its fruit: the knowledge that while a robot based on the Zumo Robot for Arduino is a perfectly fine small robot for anyone who wants to program in C++ and compete in Mini Sumo competitions — which is what it’s designed for — it is difficult to modify. If one wants to use odometry for navigation the readymade Zumo 32U4 Robot already has motor encoders built in, and would therefore be more suited for more advanced robotics, something beyond a Sumo competition.
But to fulfill my set of requirements, a robot based on the Zumo chassis still remains a real possibility, using a different controller. I’ll explore that in a future post.