MAE 106 · UC Irvine

Pneumatic Rover

A rover powered by compressed air, built to follow a course with two turns.

Second place in our group at the final competition

GitHub

Our pneumatic rover with its air storage tire above the chassis — Our finished rover. The tire on top stores the compressed air.

The course

Three straight sections.
Two turns.

For MAE 106, we built a rover that could travel 3 m, turn, continue for 15 m, turn again, and travel the final 3 m.

3 mthen turn
15 mthen turn
3 mto finish

Air from an inflated tire drove a piston that pushed against the ground. A small compass measured heading with roughly 10° of error, while limit switches on the rear wheels measured distance.

My role

I coordinated team tasks and testing, and helped design the chassis and steering in SolidWorks. I also 3D printed parts and wrote, tuned, and debugged the control code.

Testing the rover

Outdoor course test

Servo bench test

Solenoid bench test

Building the rover

We used a modular frame with printed parts, carbon fiber tubes, and wooden panels. Parts such as the steering linkage and piston mount could be removed and replaced as we tested the design.

SolidWorks assembly of the rover with its tire air tank, chassis and wheels — The full rover assembly.

CAD view of the front wheel steering linkage — The front steering linkage.

CAD detail of the angled pneumatic cylinder and its contact foot — The piston and its contact foot.

Getting back onto a straight path

The control code used wheel travel to track distance and the compass to read heading. I tuned a predefined steering sequence for turns and used PID steering to correct the heading on straight sections.

We tested five proportional gains, with ten runs at each setting. Each test started with a sharp right turn followed by a 10 m straight run. A gain of 2.4 gave the lowest error score, which combined sideways drift with a penalty for leaving or nearly leaving the course.

Test chart comparing lateral error and the penalized error score for five proportional gains, with the lowest score at Kp 2.4 — Steering gain tests after a sharp turn. These 10 m tests were separate from the full competition course.