Robot Competition!

Hi all, in this monthly-long project, you are going to design, build, and prototype a working bridge-crossing robot. Here is a detailed documentation of the competition requirment. Read it thouougly will be helpful for the project.

Design Target

  • Your robot will start behind a start line (will be marked with bright marker on the day of competition) on the bridge, go through a bump, cross the finish line (marked on the competition day), and stop. Each group will be given two chance (On the mark of robot start moving). Accomplishing this task partially will be granted partial grade.
  • You will design the robot with the ESP32 microcontroller and \textbf{only ONE stepper motor} from your kit. The instructor and TA will pick 2 of the most outstanding mechanism design and award bonus credit (worth 10\% of the total points of this project) to the two groups.
  • Your robot will be powered via a battery of your choice. By default we provide two shared 5V USB power bank. If you are using the shared power bank, please design your robot so that the power bank can be easily accessed.
  • Your robot has to be controlled remotely. This can be through (1) WIFI network. (2) Bluetooth, (3) IR switch from your kit. If you choose to use WIFI or Bluetooth, you can choose to issue the control from either a laptop, a phone, or a custom controller made with another ESP32 module.
  • You should design your robot with a "body" to affix all the parts. All components including motor, power bank, breakout board, bread board, etc, should be properly installed and constraint mechanically.
    • If any of the components can be directly removed from your robot body by hand without extra strength, tools, or effort will be considered as "not properly installed". All forms of glue and tape are also not allowed. </li>
  • Your robot body should contain at least one part that is made with laser cutter with a justified reason (e.g. laser cut large-area flat piece with 2D features is more efficient than other processes; or you want a see through window to monitor internal part and acrylic is hard to 3D print but easy to laser cut)

Team

Unlike the weekly assignment, in this robot design project you will pair up with another classmate and work together on the design. Although, as we have an odd number of students, we will reserve 3 spots for students who would like to work on this individually. The compensation for you working by yourself, is that your grade will have a 1.3X multiplier (caps at full). We have opened a number of groups on ELMS. You can sign up yourself to one of the groups like how we did for the semester-long project.

Logistics

To accommodate this competition and your robot development, Sandbox is generously offering a spot for you to test your prototypes along the way. We will use the same setup to hold the competition. Please make sure all the items at the “development center” won’t leave sandbox.

Hint

Check this: detailed documentation