It all started a month and some weeks ago, it was the end of the scholar year and we were studying for the final tests. Those were times of hard work, nevertheless a new project was born.

The last day of the Rhones-Alpes Robot Cup 2009 we discussed, at the clubelek,  about possibles ways of improving the event and the image of the club. I said that doing small and fancy projects should help us out. Something like line followers or light followers. Some agreed, some did not. The discussion did not last long and the subject didn’t go any further.

Going back to the end of the school, I decided to build a tiny smart robot, that would be able to do several tasks. I focused in creating a robot that would show the kind of stuff that can be easily built with today’s technology. The kind of stuff the robot will do when completed is :

• Intelligent autonomous maze exploration, taking the idea from the  Robothon SRS line maze contest.
• Shortest path search towards the exit from the start point.
• Wireless communication with a computer to show how the labyrinth is being explored.
• Wireless communication of the robot’s decisions to a computer to show the path it’s going to take when exploring the maze.
• Semi automatic maze exploration : a human will control the robot’s decisions using a computer software. A human will then try to find the exit of the maze.
• 8-bit music player.
• Autonomous Line follower, similar to the Robothon SRS line following contest.
• Human controlled Line Follower with a wiimote like in mario kart : humans could match the robot or other humans. The fastest, the winner.

The Sigma Project 2009, welcome to earth…

More info is coming up, keep tuned.