“Wildly popular with hard-core technologists and hobbyists alike, this year’s Bay Area RoboGames drew over 465 robots with some 646 engineers at the controls.

Throughout the day on March 26, robots off all sizes, strengths and abilities took part in various competitions in the San Francisco RoboGames. Participating in the RoboMagellan event, Xilinx engineers Brandon Blodget and James Ogden entered their Spartan-3-based robot Xploradora.

Xploradora placed 3rd for a Bronze Medal!

RoboMagellan was a competition requiring robots to autonomously navigate varied, outdoor terrain. The timed event tested robot obstacle avoidance capabilities and required vehicles to maneuver between two objects — orange traffic cones — about a half-mile down steps, then onto a lawn and around trees.

Xploradora is a self-propelled, self-directing machine, outfitted with motors, encoders, five sonar sensors, a compass, GPS, and accelerometers. The robot is controlled by specialized Verilog cores, which are attached to a Microblaze processor with a combination of FSL and OPB buses. The high-level robot code then runs on Microblaze and communicates with the hardware modules.

The robot is equipped with GPS, an onboard compass, accelerometer, sonar distance sensors, a digital video camera, and a bluetooth interface for debugging from a laptop.

Xploradora is a fun demonstration platform showcasing FPGA-based robotics technology – and provides a first hand look at the usefulness and flexibility of FPGAs in robotics applications.

Click here for additional details about the RoboMagellan competition, and photos of the course and competitors.

Click here to go to the RoboGames web site and here to read about the event as covered in EE Times magazine.”