The brief

The first step was to join the society facebook group.  Next came the information about the challenge; a 'sandbox' challenge.  I have found out this means you set your own agenda.
I got the information from some of the guys and from the fb page as I rudely missed the introductory lecture.

There will be a course to navigate however I see fit.

I decided to make a wheeled or tracked vehicle that would follow a line and not crash into a wall (one of the lines goes into a wall). 

I wanted to keep the robot fairly simple and my personal goals are:

1: learn how to connect the various components (power supply, motors, drivers, sensors, controllersetc

2: learn some programming

3: design a power distribution circuit (I have read that these things are not the sort of things you just plug in and go.)

Depending on how this goes I will make the decision to increase the complexity later on. A couple of ideas are to make a tilt and pan mount for the ultrasonic sensor and to install the radio beacon things which may help to determine whether or not the robot knows it is at the finish.  If I could also then make it do something to signal it thinks it is at the finish that would be cool.