Design Overview

Goal: Design and build a wirelessly-controlled seafaring robot capable of playing a king-of-the-hill inspired game.

Project Motivation

The stealth house boat is Team Rainsgineers’ final project for Stanford’s ME 218C: Mechatronics. The goal of the project was to build a remote controlled boat capable of playing a competitive game of king of the hill. Boats competed in teams of two to capture various atolls spread out in a Stanford fountain.

Key Project Challenges

Develop a creative control system for the boat utilizing at least three sensing modalities as inputs.
Implement wireless communications to control boat movement, establish teammates, and capture atolls.
Develop a class-wide communications protocol to standardize the myriad of communications taking place at once.
Develop the circuits and software to read the RFID cards attached to atolls, decode them, and send them to atolls in order to capture them.
Design an integrated system consisting of multiple processors, H-Bridges, and transceivers, and communicating between the various components using UART, SPI, and RF protocols.
Designing a vessel with a robust drivetrain and adequate waterproofing to protect the circuits, batteries, and mechanisms on board.

(Full Project Description)

Throughout the website, we refer to the boat as an ACV, or atoll capturing vehicle, and the controller as a CVC, or capture vehicle controller.