Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | Ant-Weight Battle Bot Proposal |
Danilo Markus Matia Choi Nikola Plavsic |
Shengkun Cui | ||
| # Ant-Weight Battle Bot Proposal Team Members: - Matia Choi (hyunwoo6) - Nikola Plavsic (plavsic2) - Danilo Markus (dmarkus2) # Problem This is our team's entry in the Fall 2026 ECE 445 Battlebots competition (Prof. Viktor Gruev): a bracket tournament of sub-2 lb, fully 3D-printed combat robots. Requirements involve wireless link to a laptop for control and judged on agility, control, and damage. Every entrant is required to carry a custom PCB with an MCU, wireless control, and motor drive. This year every robot must stream a live camera feed and time-of-flight range data to the driver's laptop, rendered live in the driver interface rather than only logged. Our team is entering on the camera-and-ToF track rather than the competition's alternative custom-weapon-ESC track. # Solution We will build the robot's custom PCB around an ESP32-S3 that captures JPEG video from an onboard camera and range data from four perimeter time-of-flight sensors, streams both live over WiFi to the driver station, and executes drive and weapon commands sent back over the same link. Range rings are drawn directly on the live video in the driver UI. The chassis is 3D-printed in PETG rather than PLA or ABS; PETG should give the combination of rigidity and flexibility that we need. The fighting tool is a horizontal spinning disc driven directly off a BLDC motor shaft through a commercial ESC. The system divides into four subsystems: camera streaming, time-of-flight ranging, weapon and drive, and power. ## Subsystem 1: Camera Streaming - MCU: ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 - Camera: OV5640 5MP module over the ESP32-S3's DVP interface (OV7251 as a fallback if arena lighting causes motion blur since it has a global shutter). - Firmware captures frames, hardware JPEG-encodes, and streams 640×480 at 20–30 fps directly into a WiFi socket to the driver UI. ## Subsystem 2: Time-of-Flight Ranging - Hardware: four VL53L1X single-zone ToF sensors, mounted front/rear/left/right on the chassis perimeter, sharing one I²C bus. - Firmware sequences each sensor's XSHUT pin at boot to reassign I²C addresses off the shared default (0x29), polls all four continuously, and pushes ranges to the driver UI as a proximity ring over the live video. ## Subsystem 3: Weapon and Drive - Weapon: a horizontal spinning disc keyed directly to a BLDC outrunner motor shaft (KV and disc mass/diameter subject to change, selected once the chassis weight budget is finalized), spun up through a commercial brushless ESC taking a PWM command from the MCU - Drive: TB6612FNG dual H-bridge driving two brushed drive gearmotors to create a differential drive. Controlled directly from MCU PWM+direction pins. - Safety: a link-loss watchdog opens a MOSFET in the shared motor power path (weapon + drive) within 500ms of losing the WiFi control link, independent of firmware state, plus a manual E-stop through the same cutoff; firmware holds the weapon ESC in a zero-command disarmed state except during a match. ## Subsystem 4: Power - 2S LiPo pack sized to the 2 lb weight budget, feeding motors directly and, through an AP2112K-3.3 and TLV70033, regulated 3.3V/5V rails for the MCU, camera, and ToF array. - Pack capacity subject to change; selected once total system current draw is measured on the assembled board. # Criterion For Success 1. Camera subsystem streams 640×480 JPEG at 20–30 fps sustained for a full 2-minute match with the overlay 2. All four VL53L1X sensors correctly re-addressed and readable over I²C on consecutive power-on cycles; reported range consistent with physical measurement. 3. All motor power cuts within 500ms of an induced WiFi disconnect, and confirm ability to re arm. 4. Functional weapon to defeat enemy teams. 5. Total robot mass, including battery, under 2 lb as weighed at inspection. |
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