Have you ever ever began a undertaking pondering it could be fairly easy to finish, solely to have the challenges pile up till they fashioned a seemingly insurmountable mountain of issues? If not, dangle round for some time and you should have this expertise quickly sufficient. A Dutch mechanical engineer named Yvo de Haas took on a undertaking of this type six years in the past pondering it could be a breeze, and has solely simply completed it.
The concept behind this construct, known as the Robotic Recreation Board, was to make a type of upgraded model of the board sport known as RoboRally. However this was to not be merely a duplicate of the unique sport — what could be the purpose of that? Because the identify implies, Robotic Recreation Board is at the beginning robotic. Gamers solely want to decide on which playing cards to play, and the motion on the board will handle itself. It was additionally given a steampunk theme, a number of playable maps, and help for as much as eight gamers.
A have a look at the hidden gantry and magnetic head (📷: Yvo de Haas)
The board itself was created from customized, 3D-printed elements and 9mm plywood. A gantry was constructed into the board, and is able to being moved to any x,y place on the floor of the board. The gantry strikes a head with a retractable magnet round, which interacts with participant items on the board to maneuver them and alter their orientation as wanted. The look of the board was made full by staining the wooden and including some brass strips. A sheet of glass was additionally put in to function the taking part in floor.
To manage the gantry, an Arduino UNO with a CNC protect was put in contained in the board. This works along side an Arduino Mega, which controls each the magnetic head and card readers. Different supporting electronics like multiplexers, motor drivers, and voltage regulators had been additionally fitted into the casing.
A set of card readers (📷: Yvo de Haas)
A set of card readers comprise Waveshare 1D/2D barcode scanner modules. These learn two-dimensional Knowledge Matrix codes which have been printed on every card. The codes comprise your complete operate of the cardboard in a textual content format. That info is used to find out the actions that the board ought to take by the software program that powers it.
The sport board floor was created utilizing a customized tileset designed in Blender, which incorporates sport components like flooring, partitions, belts, and beginning positions. This tileset was organized utilizing a software program device known as Tiled, the place the sport map might be simply designed and modified. The finished map design was then printed on A3-size paper. To guard the printed board from put on and tear throughout gameplay, the paper was laminated, offering a sturdy floor. After laminating, every board part was fastidiously reduce to the right dimensions, with the corners clipped for a easy, rounded end.
A collection of sport boards (📷: Yvo de Haas)
Software program written in Python is the place the sport truly performs out, and it instructs the Arduinos to reflect the digital motion on the bodily sport board. It manages all sport logic, interfacing with the cardboard readers to course of participant inputs and management the mechanical motion of the gantry.
Constructing the Robotic Recreation Board has been an extended journey, and it’s not fairly over but. Wanting forward, de Haas needs to reduce the necessity for gamers to have to take a look at the pc that runs the sport software program, however because it presently stands, it is necessary for understanding the present sport state. And, as you may anticipate, there are many different concepts for enhancements as nicely. Whether or not or not this undertaking will ever really be completed continues to be up within the air.
