For those of you who were unable to make it here is a report of what we got up to last Wednesday. Those who were there feel free to email me with any corrections or missing details.

The SumoBot session attracted a turn out of about 40 people and six robots. The collection raised $47.40 for Science Alive that was much appreciated. Next meeting will be Tuesday 14th April at 6.30pm in the Science Alive Seminar Room. We hope to have demonstrations of the Robocup Junior challenges (Dance, Rescue and Football) at 6.30pm and a talk from Charles Manning about DIY design and construction of Sensors for the Lego NXT at 8pm.

Three Lego NXT robots came along brought by Yuito recently arrived from Japan, my battle hardened robot Gnasher and Alexs robot that I don’t have a name for yet. Yuito had a very neat reciprocating pusher and Alex has a neat set of gears that pull any loose parts off unsuspecting robots and try to haul them up off their wheels. Yuito’s dad Hiroto pointed out that my robot was too large for the rules (I should check this out). Each of the robots did a fine job of searching the ring for opponents and pushing them out of the ring. However Alex’s robot won through with an uncanny knack for remaining firmly on the board while pushing opponents out. With a bit of luck I’ll post the video soon.

Peter brought along three robots from the inex collection. See: http://robokits.co.nz/Robo-STAMP-YouTube Buggy Bonzai and Sumo Tank took part in the Sumo against the NXT bots. This was an interesting match with no clear winners as the NXT’s could not move the inex bots once they had stalled. The third robot showed off the tabletop challenge wondering randomly around the table and not falling off.

Andrew gave us further details about how the folks in Japan make robot wheels by machining hubs and casting rubber tyres onto them. I’m sure this technique has potential for the home workshop.

There appears to be plenty more to be discovered about Sumo technology and challenge organization. If we run this event again we need more robots, scales, measuring devices and a no go zone around the ring to prevent spectators appearing to the robots as opponents!