Robofest 4.0 competition pushed us to engineer a highly stable two-wheeled, free-standing robot capable of autonomous stability and control. Me and my team successfully designed out a custom control architecture that performed flawlessly to meet the rigorous competition standards.
Competition Milestones
- Design Report Stage — Thoroughly documented parametric CAD modeling and hardware selection. We passed this initial stage with high marks for practical structural stability and feasibility.
- Proof of Concept (PoC) Stage — Successfully demonstrated our integrated system and sensor fusion working on breadboards and a scaled-down prototype chassis, clearing the proof round with ease.
My Contributions
As a core engineer on the team, my primary role revolved around:
- Implementing sensor fusion (combining IMU readings and motor encoders) to get precise angular position without drift
- Tuning the PID cascade loops (angle, angular velocity, and position) ensuring the robot recovers rapidly from disturbances
- Designing and assembling the electronics stack mapping the microcontroller to the motor drivers and sensors
Engineering Challenges
Self-balancing robots represent a classic inverted pendulum problem in control theory. Tuning a system to respond within milliseconds to constant gravitational pull and external forces required fine-tuning the control loop frequency and managing sensor noise through complementary filters.
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