IDC Robocon

During the summer I saw an email stating that if I signed up for this compeition, I would get a free trip to India. I went and competed and ended up getting 2nd place in this International competition. The idea of the competition was that schools from around the world would show up and compete, and teams were a mix of people from different countries. I was the only American, but other countries that were represented were India, Japan, Korea, and Australia from my memory. I led the team and did a lot of the design, while the rest of the team worked on electronics, simulating the robot in ROS, and testing.

We only a set amount of materials that we could use, we were given three DC motors, three servos, and some electronics. For fabrication we were allowed to 3D print with 1kg of filament and a couple sheets of acrylic. Most robots designed around two wheel drive, but for the design, I convinced the team that 4WD is definitely possible even with our constraints, and would be beneficial, as our robot would be better balanced going up the ramp. To accomplish this, we had to print our wheels with the axles, and sand down the axles a lot as we didn't have bearings. We used a pencil to decrease friction further. Since we only had two motors, we used gears for torque transfer.