Currently for my erasing robot I have it powered by 5V from the USB cable and 6V from a battery pack. This provides enough power for the IR circuit and motors to work together. Next I will be adding a shield to the Arduino.
There are a lot of variables to check. I need to find out what surface my robot can read a line from. So far I have tested paper and black sharpie and that was successful and I have tested white board and black marker. That too was successful but not as reliable. I believe this is due to a bad black marker that didn’t produce rich ink. I will test again with a new marker.
A second variable is weight needed to erase mark off board. I haven’t tested this yet, but my first idea is to have the robot inch forward rotating one wheel at a time to make it “wipe” the mark away instead of just driving over it.
Third variable is driving on the surface of a white board. I have not tested this either, but believe the weight of the robot with rubber bands on the tires will create enough friction to drive on the slippery white board surface.
Drew Grigsby 