Design of semi-autonomous robots for competitive robotics

This paper presents the first-generation design of two classes of semi-autonomous competitive robots created in-house at University of Texas at San Antonio for iTEC, the educational outreach program sponsored at the university. The robots created for the outreach program will compete with each other in games of sumo-wrestling and soccer. Design of the robots involved the choice on the physical configuration of the robot systems, electronics systems, sensor suites, semi-autonomous behaviors, human control overrides and computer programming methodologies utilized. This paper will go over highlights of each system and remarks over the design process.