I took a couple of hours today to photograph and document two old minisumo projects: Screech and Velox. You can see the photos here and here.

Screech was my very first minisumo and I attempted to make one without starting with a kit. It was moderately successful (good enough to win first place in Traditional Minisumo at Robothon 2003) but quickly lost any competitive edge against more advanced robots. Today it sits on a shelf and will eventually be recycled into a new robot.

The picture to the left is Velox as it is today. This isn’t what Velox looked like originally. I had purchased a Mark III kit and built it pretty much as-is except for using a different controller.

Velox continues to be a pretty good robot though. Recently it placed third in Advanced Minisumo at the WCRG. Over the last few years I’ve made many modifications to try to be more competitive. I didn’t keep a good photographic record, unfortunately, and I don’t even recall all the changes that were made. I do recall that at one time I had mounted 4 AA batteries above the controller board though. It had a total of 8 AA batteries and was pretty powerful at the time (circa 2003).

Hope you enjoy the pictures.