Last week, I got a Pololu Zumo 32U4. I am quite impressed with this little robot and Pololu did a heck of a job putting this guy together. I’m in the process of teaching a group of kids how to transition out of LEGO Mindstorms robots and into the next step, and I think this will do the trick.
The robot has:
- Two 75:1 geared, brushed motors, both with encoders.
- A down facing light sensor array across the front for line following and line/edge detection.
- Three IR proximity sensors.
- A six-axis IMU.
- A piezo speaker.
- A two-line LCD display.
The robot comes with full Arduino library support and several example programs. The example programs are very useful for someone like myself for understanding how the use the sensors and actuators. However, they are a little complex for my group of kids that transitioning from EV3-G programming to Arduino-based robotics. Over the couple of weeks, I’ll be posting blog entries for basic lessons for teaching the kids in to transition from EV3-G to Zumo in a way with direct parallels to LEGO robotics. We have a Sumo competition coming up in November, and it is my hope to have the learning enough about the Zumo to use this for the competition.