Triton Robotics Competition Robot

Triton Robotics builds robots for the RoboMaster competition. The Hero is remote-controlled, fires 42 mm projectiles at 16 m/s, and is the team’s main offensive unit. I worked on two generations of its chassis, led the Hero subteam, and then served as team president.

2021–22: smaller, lighter, easier to fix

As a mechanical team member I designed and built a new chassis for the Hero. The old one was hard to maintain and transport, with no access ports and too much material.

• 30% less aluminum tubing, with polycarbonate plates carrying the electronics.
• A hinged top plate for access to the internals.
• A modular suspension, and a turret that rotates independently of the chassis.
• Force analysis on the lightweight chassis to check it would hold up.
• Performance: climbs a 15° ramp, with 45° elevation and 30° depression for aiming.

Two failures from the first version drove the fixes:

1. The suspension lunged under acceleration. We moved to a standard layout with shock absorbers parallel to the mecanum wheels.
2. The chain-driven turret yaw deformed and restricted rotation. We replaced it with a belt drive that spreads the stress.

2022–23: leading the Hero redesign

In May 2022 I became the Hero robot lead. I set the goals for the redesign, sketched the first concept of the chassis, and coordinated with the electronics, embedded, and computer vision teams so their hardware fit the mechanical design. I ran the subteam with weekly meetings, assigned tasks, and Gantt charts to hold deadlines. In SolidWorks I modeled the chassis, drivetrain, and turret and combined them into a full assembly to check manufacturability.

• Omni-wheel X-drive for planar movement and efficient rotation about the center.
• A circular chassis with a bumper ring on bearings, so the robot can deflect off obstacles without interrupting its spin.
• A 50 mm-bore slip ring so the turret rotates without limit and the wires don’t tangle.
• A revolver-inspired serializer that indexes the projectiles and feeds them up through the slip ring to a back-fed, belt-driven turret, with a simple ball path to reduce jams.
• Modular drivetrain, bumper, and frame, so it is quick to assemble and repair.

It climbed the same 15° ramp with no suspension, and measured about 684 × 541 × 472 mm. I mentored six mechanical engineers through CAD, drawings, and machine shop work.

President, 2023–24

I led the 80-member team across mechanical, electrical, and software sub-teams and rebuilt the training program and documentation so new members could get up to speed faster. My goal was to make the team welcoming to people with no robotics background, because I started that way myself.

About 40 new members came through training that year, which fixed a succession problem that had left my term short of team leads.

The team competed at the RoboMaster North American regionals in Seattle (2023) and Boulder (2024). During my term the robots were damaged in shipping, but we still won two 1v1 matches and put up a fight in the 3v3 matches.

Afterward I stayed on as an advisor, helping with outreach as the team prepared to host RoboMaster at UC San Diego.