301: SoutheastCon Hardware Competition

This project involved building a robot capable of moving autonomously for the SoutheastCon 2025 robotics competition. The goal was to make a robot that could move around an arena, collect astral materials, put them into containers, position the containers on the correct pad, and place a team beacon in the beacon mast—all under three minutes. We earned more points by completing tasks correctly.

The arena was a four-by-eight-foot  area with half of it under a cloth simulating a cave-like structure. The robot started in the loading area and moved once an LED lit up. Different astral materials were randomly scattered throughout the whole arena. There were two types: Geodinium which had a magnet inside and Nebulite which was solid plastic. Both were visually identical. The robot moved around to collect these materials, then went to the front of the arena to scan an AprilTag. This tag told the robot where to place the container with the materials. To collect more points, we also programmed the robot to place a team beacon inside the beacon mast at the front of the arena.

To make the robot work, we used computer programs to help the robot move around, grab things and place them. Our design used parts like Arduino and Raspberry Pi computers, and sensors like a camera and a LiDAR sensor to make the robot reliable and able to do more things.