JUNIOR
Design Overview

Junior

 

Meet Junior

Junior is Team Minion's Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV) for the 2026 RobotX Maritime Challenge and serves as the primary surface platform and mothership for the Minion Fleet. Originally developed for RoboBoat 2026, Junior has been adapted for the RobotX Challenge to support autonomous navigation, environmental perception, communications, and coordination with the team's UAV and UUV platforms.

Junior uses a modular catamaran configuration with two hydrodynamic pontoons and a lightweight central deck. The design emphasizes maneuverability, sensor reliability, lightweight transportation, and modularity, allowing vehicle systems to be repositioned, tested, and upgraded as development progresses.

Hull & Deck Design

Junior's twin-pontoon hull and central deck provide the vehicle's primary structural platform. The pontoons are shaped to reduce drag through the water and support holonomic maneuvering, while modular mounting rails let equipment be repositioned as the vehicle configuration evolves over competition cycles.

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Electrical Infrastructure

Junior's electrical system packs power distribution, onboard computing, communications, and vehicle control into a lightweight, modular enclosure. It runs on hot-swappable drill battery packs, so a drained pack can be swapped out between runs. Communications are split by role rather than run over a single link: one channel handles fleet-to-fleet coordination, the other ties back to the base station, and keeping them separate is part of how the system stays within international RF limits.

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Sensors & Payloads

Junior serves as the primary perception platform for the Minion Fleet. Its sensor suite combines three Livox Horizon LiDAR units, a high-dynamic-range camera, and GNSS/IMU localization to support environmental mapping, object detection and classification, and autonomous navigation.

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Timeline & Testing

Junior has undergone iterative mechanical, electrical, sensing, communications, and software development since its initial RoboBoat configuration. Testing progresses from analysis and subsystem testing through vehicle integration and water testing, with results used to identify design changes and validate system performance.

As development continues, the team is documenting test objectives, procedures, results, and design changes to establish Junior's readiness for RobotX 2026.

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