After getting the basic circuitry nailed down, it was time for another motor test. The Solarbotics motors we decided on came in two different gear ratios. It was a bit hard to visualize how fast the robots would be, or how much torque was going to be required to move them. So, when we got the motor and wheel combo deal, we got a set of both the slower, high torque motors and the faster, lower torque ones. The prototypes weren't off the breadboard yet, let alone programmed, so we grabbed a piece of acrylic, a battery pack, the motors and wheels, and a cheap RC toy (the kind you charge from a USB port and run around on your desk when the boss isn't around). The toy didn't seem to mind it's role as organ donor, and we soon had the RC hooked up to the motors and batteries to create one of the ugliest little machines ever built...

As ungainly as it looked, it worked. We ran it around on the floor with both types of motors to get some sense of what each type was capable of. The slower motors were a bit, well, slow, and since we weren't going to be taking the 'bots offroading, we opted for the faster motors to power the prototypes.