301: IEEE SoutheastCon 2024 Hardware Competition (Multidisciplinary Team)

The purpose of this project is to design a robot for the IEEE SoutheastCon 2024 hardware competition. In this competition, the robot must be able to pick up blocks and move them. The robot must also be able to pass over a 7-inch gap and press a button, performing these tasks quickly and without any outside control. One important strategy we used was optimization.

The competition uses a point system that gives more importance on reaching the button at the end than moving the blocks. This meant our design only needed to focus on reaching the button, with extra points added by moving blocks around the course. We designed the robot using a chassis with four wheels as a base for the other parts. We used sensors to move through the course and locate blocks. We used a combine to pick up and store the blocks.

Our design employs a microcontroller to send signals to all other parts of the design. After the design was assembled, we focused on testing and tuning the robot to complete the competition objectives. We designed, built and tested a robot for competition, and it performed as expected.