My latest robot project is called ChessBot and is designed to take away the drudgery of manually moving chess pieces.
There have been many chess playing robots in the past and these machines either used a long robotic arm to pick up and place the chess pieces or provided locomotion with a movable electromagnet located under the board.
ChessBot takes a hybrid approach that produces a more visually interesting way to move a chess pieces. It uses the AL5D robotic arm to pick up and place pieces but does not rely totally on the arm to provide placement. The arm itself is mounted on a mobile platform (called the Cart) that can align the arm precisely with any row or column (called Rank and File in the chess world) on the chessboard.
The most novel feature of ChessBot’s positioning system is the ability to rotate the entire chessboard by up to 180 degrees (using a Base Rotate Kit). By using the cart and the rotating board approach the robotic arm never has to reach into the chessboard by more than four squares. The arm is now able to operate in its reliable “sweet spotâ€