Sumo Robot

the hardware

• ESP32
• 24V battery pack, which is probably too much, and it almost set my schoolbag on fire
• Two buck converters: 12V for the motor drivers, 5V for the ESP32
• Two BTS7960 motor drivers
• Two high torque, low speed motors on custom welded brackets
• Chassis made of aluminium sheets, with a front scoop welded at 40°

how it's controlled

Bluetooth, using a generic app that's basically a keypad sending integers and updating booleans. The range is fine but it has pairing issues, it worked about 4 times out of 10, which makes it a hassle to use competitively.

what went wrong

There's no overcurrent protection and no fuse, and there should have been. We ruined the battery about 4 times. Testing was mostly ramming it into a box, a wall and my own foot, and for the first 10 tries it didn't turn back on afterwards. It took a month and a loss at a competition from battery failure to fix it.

if i build the next one

• Redesign the chassis with a heavier core
• Auto-targeting
• A flipper in the slope
• A battery with a BMS
• A custom app with commands for spinning and dashing