The Plan Part 2 - Building the Courses

One further challenge this year is to build the arena and courses yourself at home. 

The Arena

The Arena needs to be fairly big - 1.5m x 1.5m. We don't have anywhere to have this permanently, so will need to build something that is portable. 

The walls need to be at least 50mm high - but to give us a good background for the camera we'd be looking to make them much higher.

So at the moment the plan is to get some planks of wood - 131mm x 24mm seems to be a good fit. 

This will be cut into 750mm lengths, with a mitre cut at one end and a flat edge at the other. The mitre ends will be hinged together to form the corners. The flat edges will be fitted together with dowels and spring clips - similar to the way an expandable table joins together. 

These will be painted matt black to give the robot the best chance of picking out coloured objects. 

For the floor, initially we'll just use the kitchen floor in the house, but when we need to start adding the markings, we'll probably need to get some hardboard to use. We can cover these with some white lino for better grip. 

The white colour will help us detect the horizon - where the walls meet the floor - on the course. The plan is to use this to check if we're moving in a straight line or not. That's the theory, although I have no idea if this will work in practice. 

So hopefully this will give us an arena we can store in the shed or loft, and put up when we need it. 

Tidy The Toys

For this challenge, we need 3 coloured blocks - Red, Blue and Green. 

For testing I bought some 5mm wooden blocks from ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wooden-Craft-Supplies-Blocks-Wood-Cubes-10mm-60mm-Hardwood-75mm-Pine-Minecraft/201306637815?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=500500762129&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

I've covered them in electrical tape. However this isn't ideal. It's hard to differentiate between the green and the blue blocks, so I'll probably try and find some distinct paints. 

Feed The Fish

For this challenge we need to build a 'fish bowl' with an open bottom and top. Currently we're not sure how we're going to build this. I'm constantly looking for any cardboard boxes that are approximately the right size! 

The Obstacle Course

This can be anything we like, and I suspect we'll come up with some ideas as we get closer to the deadline. The current plan is to run the course outside in the garden, and do a lap of the garden path. But as for obstacles, we haven't really thought too much about these to date.