NYU Robomaster

I had been watching RoboMaster games long before I joined the NYU team. The sight of robots driving around and shooting projectiles fascinated me and sparked my interest. This fall semester, I joined NYU RoboMaster, initially to help out a friend. However, I also saw it as an opportunity to experience being part of a large team with multiple departments and frequent meetings. Working in such a collaborative environment has helped me adapt to the dynamics of the engineering field.

I became a member of the Electrical Engineering (EE) division, where we are responsible for the electrical systems of various robots. As part of my contributions, I obstained an Altium certification for PCB production, enhancing my skills in designing and manufacturing circuit boards.

UART Connector

My first task was to design a UART connection between a Jetson board and a jumper wire using Altium. Through this project, I learned how to research and navigate the existing market to identify suitable electrical components for the design. Below is my schematic for the UART connection.

Buck Converter

Next, I designed a buck converter to step down the input voltage, ranging from 14 to 26 volts, to a stable 3.3 volts. Below are the schematic and PCB designs for the converter.

It's funny how I mistakenly reverse the connector's direction. Here is the fixed board:

Generic Library

I went on to build a generic library for our team. Before, we incorporate components of different size from different company. However, we want to just drag our desired component with desired package size from our workspace. I make sure we can do that by creating a generic library. This library contains components with different package size, such as resistor, LED, capacitors, and inductors. Below shows a list of available component I created.

With this library, our PCB design can be at least 2x faster as we don't have to keep building schematic or PCB library—all we have to do is drag and use.

RB14 Buck Converter with USB-C 

This Buck Converter step down the voltage to 5 volts, and it supports USB-C connection on one side, customized for our robots.

Here is a schematic:

Here is the 3D view of the board.

Over Voltage and Reverse Polarity Protection

Implementing protection measures was crucial, as our team lacked them in previous years. Last semester, we encountered issues with sparking due to insufficient protection. To address this, we added an over-voltage and reverse-polarity protection board. Below is the circuit lab display, showing the schematic and simulation. For over-voltage protection, we incorporated a diode and a BJT control circuit to safeguard the system effectively.

Here is the simulation result of the reverse polarity protection circuit.