The Chess Robot

Abstract: Chess is an old game which is very popular. But since we today live in an increasingly digitalised world, most of the chess games are nowadays played via a computer. It’s a pity because it takes away the feeling of playing a real game of chess. The recent development in the technology has however made it possible to create a lot of new robots like chess robots. The aim of this bachelor thesis was therefore to create an automated chess robot and explore how fast the robot can move the pieces. Due to the complexity of the game the focus has been to create a robot that will act as a link. The robot detects the chess pieces' movements by using reed switches and then moves the pieces with an electromagnet controlled by stepper motors. An Arduino was used to control the sensors and another to actuate the stepper motors. To evaluate the speed of the electromagnet some tests had to be made and analysed. The tests focused on comparing a few important moves and change the voltage that was applied to the motor to see if it had an impact on the speed. The test showed that the voltage clearly had an impact on the motor speed and that the motors were very accurate and thus never left the piece on the wrong square.