Powering the robot

The robot needs power for all its parts. We must consider two major power systems: the power for all the digital parts, such as the Raspberry Pi and sensors, and then the power for the motors.Motors use a lot of power, often being one of the larger consumers of a robot, with servo motors sometimes greedier than the drive motors. Motors can also need higher or different voltages from the Raspberry Pi. However, with the choice of motors we have, they will comfortably run at the same voltage.A power system will need to either provide two different power sources – one for the Raspberry Pi and one for the motors or be a system large enough to cope with all the demands. A system that cannot handle all the power may experience voltage drops and cause Raspberry Pi resets, along with SD card corruption, so it must be avoided.We will also need to make trade-offs on the weight and size of the power system versus how much play time we want between charges.There are a few...