I may have had an ulterior agenda for the hovercraft. Back when I was in college (a little more than a year ago), I was a part of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society at UT Austin, and we would make robots for various competitions (this is actually how the Robotics BoosterPack got started. the department was switching over to Stellaris Launchpads, and we wanted to update our Robotics controller to keep in line with the Electrical Engineering's curriculum. Out of the three designs that were created for consideration, mine was a tad bit too complicated to make without assembly services, but I've still been working on it ever since).

Well, as luck would have it, there was a small informal competition that started being held called the Convention for Unconventional Robotic Movement (CURM), in which all you needed to do was go straight in a unique and unusual way. The only real limitation was that you couldn't use wheels. They didn't place a restriction that you needed to be a student, and since they're a fun, smart group of kids, I decided to enter and have fun.

Fast forward to the competition, and now I have a semi-working cardboard prototype! At this point, I have a very basic test app for the BoosterPack that isn't necessarily geared for Hovercraft control, but it'll do.

I've also made progress on the cardboard hovercraft, which works quite nice indoors (aka concrete and tiles). I created a chamber out of cardboard and addressed the perforation issue by wrapping electrical tape around the chamber. It works, but I'd like something better, if possible. I'm still using the dual EDF design to provide hover thrust, and ziptied a third EDF to a servo on top to provide steering capabilities. It get's the job done, but again, I'd like to find a better solution.

During the competition, it performed well enough (sense a trend?) since the distance needed to finish was only a couple of feet. Control is still a huge pain to do manually, which is something I'd like to address later. Good times were had, people OOhed and AAhed, and as far as I could tell, everyone had fun. Proof of concept success!

As of right now, there are ALOT of firmware bugs that need to be fixed. I also want a better way to control the Hovercraft, but that'll have to take a backseat until I get the firmware bugs swashed.

One week until the Austin Mini Maker Faire!