Droid Driving Course
2019-11-02By: Darren Poulson
First introduced at R2UK in 2018, the Droid Driving Course has proven a popular attraction at events. Designed to showcase a driver’s (and droid’s) skill at navigating obstacles in a controlled manner. (Tho that isn’t always the case with some of the more ‘enthusiastic’ members!)
Originally the timings were recorded manually in a spreadsheet, using the big clock that Colin Barker designed and built, along with simple bump sensors that would light up as pass/fail depending on how you hit them.
Eventually, all the course was automated, and not only that, it was entirely rebuilt out of aluminium box section to make it easy to move and more sturdy!
- Central Scoring hub,
- Wireless sensors to automatically report penalties,
- Big screen capabilities to display the leaderboard,
- RFID scanning to automatically register a droid and its owner as the next entrant.
The new system was tested at R2UK 2019, and actually worked fairly well after an initial setup. Since then the new R2 Builders ID cards have been sent out with RFID enabled which should smooth things over for the next event.
There are still a few items to be added, such as shock sensors to register when a droid hits the side of the course and give a penalty, and the ability to switch out the types of course easily and make it more modular.
All info on the electronics, setup, etc. can be found on Github.