Audience; Educational Concepts From The Sumobot - Parallax Boe-Bot Assembly

Page viii · SumoBot – Mini Sumo Robotics
This text was authored by Jon Williams of Parallax, and contains additional material by
several contributors, including Andy Lindsay and Ken Gracey of Parallax, as well as Bill
Wong of Pennsylvania. Bill is an editor with Electronic Design magazine and a serious
BASIC Stamp robotics enthusiast. Bill enjoys creating BASIC Stamp powered robots
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with his daughter, who has gone on to win several county and state awards with her maze
solving robotics projects.

AUDIENCE

SumoBot was written for ages 12+ as a complimentary text to Parallax's Robotics with
the Boe-Bot and Advanced Robotics with the Toddler student guides. Like all Parallax
texts, this series of experiments teaches new techniques and circuits with minimal overlap
between the other publications. The general topics introduced in this series are: basic
SumoBot locomotion under program control, edge avoidance, and opponent detection
based on a variety of sensor inputs, as well as navigation opponent hunting using
programmed artificial intelligence. Each topic is addressed in an introductory format
designed to impart a conceptual understanding along with some hands-on experience.
Those who intend to delve further into industrial technology, electronics or robotics are
likely to benefit significantly from initial experiences with these topics.
If your experience with the SumoBot
know at support@parallax.com.

EDUCATIONAL CONCEPTS FROM THE SUMOBOT

Educators frequently ask us at Parallax what can be learned from our different texts and
application notes. The SumoBot is considered an intermediate robotic project and
generally will instruct the following concepts:
•
Interaction between mechanical and electrical systems, and the ability to tune
hardware or adjust software to obtain desired results.
•
Intermediate programming skills with the BASIC Stamp 2 microcontroller. An
efficient SumoBot program makes use of efficient BASIC Stamp programming
techniques with BRANCH and LOOKDOWN, variable aliasing, general sound
programming practices (constant/variable definitions that allow for program
customization in just a few places rather than throughout an entire program).
•
A step-wise process which starts with the basics and builds to something more
complex and ultimately more useful.
robot differs from our expectations, please let us
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