This is the homepage of mbed Robot Racing. Check out the video!

The Challenge¶

It's simple. Drive the m3pi robot around the track to achieve the fastest lap time!

You can drive it using an Android Tablet and App connected to it with Bluetooth, or go to The Pits to script it with predefined commands, or make a fully autonomous line follower; it is only the laptime that counts!

All the results will appear on http://mbed.org/robotracing/

The Rules¶

The rules are simple too:

• There is a rolling start, the first break of the beam starts the counter, and the second stops it
• The judges decision is final

Start your engines!¶

If you have an m3pi in front of you and you want to get going, go to the m3pi page.

How does it work?¶

The whole setup lets you race the mbed m3pi robot from a Android Tablet, whilst a webpage automatically times you and takes your picture as you cross the line, ready to be uploaded to the leader board!

Robot Remote Control: The mbed m3pi robot has motors and line sensors, but also a Bluetooth module. This allows other things with Bluetooth to connect to it, like a mobile phone or a new Archos Android Tablet! We programmed a custom Android app that reads the accelerometer values of the tablet, and then tells the robot what to do based on those readings. So you can drive the robot by wiggling the phone!

Website Timer Leaderboard: We also have a leader board website, but with some twists. This website also times you and takes your picture! A beam breaker is setup on the track, connected to another mbed. The mbed is emulating a USB keyboard, which is plugged in to the PC viewing the website. When the beam is broken, the mbed detects this and then "presses" a chosen key on the emulated keyboard. Javascript on the website is looking out for this using a onkeypress() handler, so when it sees this, it starts a big Javascript timer running. When the robot crosses the line to finish, a second key is sent and the Javascript stops the timer.

It also triggers a Flash app to take a snap from a webcam to catch a photo of you as you finish the lap! Click submit and your time and photo is entered in to the leader board.

The m3pi Robot¶

The m3piis a robot platform based on the 3pi robot from Pololu.

For more information on getting started see the m3pi page.

If you want to see more about how the m3pi came to exist, see the m3pi Development page.

The Track¶

The track is a total 1188mm x 2100mm. It can be made from 10 A2 panels (594mm x 420mm)