Strings & Ints

At my robot club’s meeting on the 18th, I threw around the idea of making a capture the flag game using the Lego NXT.

There was at least one person who liked the idea, Xander, and we agreed to make some plans (and robots ofcourse) for it. So yesterday I got cracking in Lego Digital Designer, and poked something together. And today I got out the Lego and started building. Thanks to LDD’s building guide, it was done rather quickly, although I spent 90% of my time reordering my Lego in order to find the components I need. It’s very small, and hopefully quite agile.

Front view:

Front view of CTFBot 1

Other front view

As you may have noticed, the part for picking up the flag isn’t quite done. That’s mostly because I’m not sure yet how that’ll be achieved. I was thinking of attaching a magnet to it, and hopefully holding on the the flag that way (and just drive against the wall or so to shake off the flag).

Well, this was the easy part. What I need to do now is write the code to find the *right* flag, bring it to the *right* base, and then stop.
For the first incarnation anyway, because the goal is to eventually be able to steal the flag from an opponent, bring it back to your base, etc.

More information on the CTF game will follow soon (I hope).