Robowars '25
Competed with two advanced robots — Back with Vengeance (state machine + brushless) and Definitely Overkill (Jetson + YOLO + depth camera).
Competed with two advanced robots — Back with Vengeance (state machine + brushless) and Definitely Overkill (Jetson + YOLO + depth camera).
Overview
Robowars is IEEE Concordia's annual autonomous sumo robot competition. After learning the fundamentals with Black Copy in 2024, I came back with two completely different robots.
My Entries
1. Black Copy: Back with Vengeance
The sequel to my first robot — same concept, properly executed:
- Brushless motors with VESCs
- Time-of-Flight sensors
- Teensy 4.0 microcontroller
- Finite state machine architecture
2. Definitely Overkill
Exactly what the name suggests:
- Jetson Orin Nano for compute
- Intel RealSense depth camera
- YOLO-based opponent detection
- Point cloud processing for 3D awareness
Why Two Robots?
I wanted to explore two fundamentally different approaches:
| Aspect | Back with Vengeance | Definitely Overkill |
|---|---|---|
| Philosophy | Do the basics right | Push the boundaries |
| Compute | Microcontroller (Teensy) | Edge AI (Jetson) |
| Sensing | ToF distance sensors | RGB-D camera + YOLO |
| Control | State machine | ML inference pipeline |
Both robots represented different stages of my learning — one refined the traditional approach, the other explored what's possible with modern AI hardware.
Outcome
Both robots competed and performed well. More importantly, building them in parallel gave me a deep understanding of the tradeoffs between classical embedded control and AI-driven robotics. And most importantly realise my own limitations in handling multiple complex projects in parallel.