Comments by Costin B.

Brandon's mini sumo robot: Black Mamba

Hi. You said that the HPCB 50:1 ratio motors offer a very good balance of speed and torque for mini-sumo robots. Can you please indicate a guide or some other kind of documentation so I can study more on the subject? I am intending to design a mini-sumo robot that should be slow, but have a lot of torque so it can push the opponents out of the ring and, at the same time, have good enough sensors and algorithms in order to always be facing the opponent so it would never be caught from behind or from the side. Even more, I intend to be very careful with the blade and chassis designs and with the weight distribution so the opponent would have a hard time getting under my robot's blade. I already covered the sensor and data processing problems. Choosing good motors is the last of my big problems.

I used DC motors from Pololu before (10:1 ratio for line follower robots and I was extremely pleased with the results) so I'm quite familiar with them, but it's the first time I'm trying to build a mini-sumo robot and I don't know what gear ratio to choose. I was thinking of trying 150:1 (200rpm, 40 oz-in) or even 210:1 (140rpm, 50 oz-in), but my fear is that these motors are going to be too slow, despite being very powerful.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Costi.

:)