Design rationale

The Rover was designed from the ground up with the following two principles in mind: researchability and performance. The researchability aspect mainly dictated what size and electronics capabilities the Rover should have. There must be enough space to mount more sensors and one should be able to harness all available connections from the Debix to cater to the students' needs. Then, to achieve performance, the car should have good acceleration, deceleration, top speed and handling to be a competitive car in the NXP Cup. Finally, it should be possible for a student with some mechanics and soldering experience to assemble and fix the Rover.

As such, a separation was drawn between the accessibility of the electronics and the electronic components and actuators that make the Rover performant. In the following picture we can see everything below the blue line are the actuators, sensor and battery required to move the Rover. The bottom half is essentially just the mechanical parts. Since student projects won't be focussing their research on any parts in that area of the rover, it is not easily accessible by design.

Conversely, the space above the blue line is meant to be accessible and offers the space and connectivity to expand the sensing capabilities of the Rover. The main processing computer of the Rover (the Debix) is mounted on the carrier board which provides filtered power as well as connections to all the available expansions that the Debix offers. Mounting holes were placed all around the top of the Rover to accommodate any potential additions to the system. Custom mounts can easily be mounted and added with custom 3D printed parts.

This design has reached its two goals of being performant as well as a suitable platform for research. The performance of the powerful hub motors as well as tight steering mechanism has enabled the ASE/Alpha to win first place in the 2024 NXP Cup Finals. Furthermore, a successful round of bachelor projects in 2024 showed that it can be used as a research platform. However, there is always room for improvement.