Autonomous Rover

(Team Lead, Physical Robotics Project)

Overview

I led a team of five to design and build an autonomous rover that could solve a pickup-and-delivery challenge inside a maze. After being placed in the maze, the rover had to find its location, travel to a block, pick it up, and drop it at one of several target spots. It needed to finish within a time limit and avoid touching the walls.

What We Built

We created the entire system from the ground up:

• A custom chassis with AC motors for precise movement
• Two Arduino boards connected with an I2C communication bus
• Five ultrasonic sensors for detecting walls and helping with localization
• A block pickup and release mechanism that we designed and tested

Software

• Wrote our own navigation, localization, and control algorithms
• Calibrated sensors and experimented with their placement for better accuracy
• Built code to handle motor speed, turning, and wall avoidance

Result

Our rover was one of the few that successfully finished the full mission. It could figure out where it was, locate the block, pick it up, and deliver it without outside help. The project required constant testing, sensor tuning, and creative problem solving. It was a hands-on experience that combined hardware design, algorithms, and teamwork to produce a reliable self-driving robot.