Hi Amber from Kelowna! Kudos to the grade 3 student being creative with awesome suggestions. Here's some answers to your question

1. The type of "robot battle" that you're referring to is "Sumo"

2. I have implemented a strict "no battle bot robot fighting" with ezrobot - and instead promote social and safety inventions with robotics that help society, not destroy it. I strong disagree with robots being programmed to fight. Using advanced technology for war-far or fighting is a taking steps back as a society. Maybe the student can be asked to invent an idea that helps society rather than destroys it? Here's some positive use-case ideas for robotics helping society:

• simulate a mars mission
• assist person with disability eat or fetch items
• navigate a disaster area
• instruct a group to exercise (use jd)

Here's more detail:

3. Now, because I also like to help, i can give a few pointers if you continue to go through with using advanced technology in a destructive way ;).

• The EZ-B (that's the computer on your robot) can support 1 camera max (not three)
• Detecting object (i.e. another robot) would have to be trained in nearly a thousand positions. Just like children with autism, when a robot views a trained object at different angles, it looks like a new object. Viewing angles change the physical outline and details of an object, making it indistinguishable from the original angle. While this can be solved by training the robot for thousands of viewing angles, it's not practical. Also, since only one camera can be connected to a robot, it makes sense to use the camera for detecting the ring border instead.

Detecting the ring What i recommend is pointing the camera down toward the ground. Train the robot to recognize the white of the outside ring. When the white is detected, have the robot reverse for a second or two to avoid the ring. Turn around 180 degrees, and move forward again. The idea is ping-pong to bounce off the edges over and over until the robots run into each other and one pushes the other out.

Detecting the opponent Sumo robots don't actually detect the opponent. They simply keep moving back and forth within the ring hoping they run into an opponent. Due to the size of the ring and the opponent, the chances of running into each other are quite high. Usually the robot is approx 10% size of the ring, which gives the robot a 1:10 chance of colliding with the opponent.

Summary

• Robots fighting each other is a terrible idea to teach to the next generation of humans taking over our planet :)
• The robot doesn't "look" or "detect" the opponent robot, it just bounces back and forth in the ring
• The camera is used to detect the outter ring edge, reverse, turn the robot around, and move forward. Loop
• Have the camera point down to detect the ring border. There is a The Robot Program episode about line following by using the camera pointed down that you can reference.
• The Robot Program and ezrobot will never support robots fighting. This means you will never see a tutorial or activity on this subject. But, we'd gladly help your students build robots that have a positive influence on society :D

I appreciate (and agree) with your perspective... it's that digital citizenship (responsibility) piece!

There is a big Robotics "tournament" at the local college, hence they set the activities. I will use your suggestions to learn how to detect, but suggest to the student to use these skills to enter the soccer game challenge. This one, they try to score on the opponent's net... similar programming concepts.

I also have a student entering the dance/theatre challenge, where JD will be re-enacting a scene from a movie.

Amber

Those are great objectives! They'll clearly take home the gold :D

I also don't condone bots for violence but in relation to the technical question of 3 cameras i assume you can always use more than 1 EZB in a project and UART or MQTT connect them so you can use more cameras just sending the results of the image color motion recognition to the primary EZB.

WOW, a no " battlebots" rule? but those are so cool watch. Seeing robots ripped to shreds and parts flying is so cool. Plus I'm a big fan of terminators just a matter of time and we will wipe ourselves out by the machine at the rate technology is going I think.

Sorry but if you have implemented a strict "no battle bot robot fighting" with ezrobot, then why is there a "battle bot" product available in your e-store?

I don't see much of a difference between pushing an opponent out of a ring versus flipping it.

Battle Flipper