Meet Team Mini-Minion through our introduction video, highlighting our members, subteam structure, and project goals as a Mechanical Engineering senior design team. This video serves as our 'get-to-know-you' for the RoboNation RoboBoat competition, showing where we are and where we are heading!
see last year’s video:
This report presents the Technical Design Report for Mini-Minion, detailing the design principles, competition strategy, and engineering decisions made for the RoboNation RoboBoat competition. It explains how our selected autonomy tasks and competition priorities directly informed the vehicle’s hull configuration, propulsion system, control architecture, and autonomy framework. The report documents system-level trade studies, subsystem integration, and testing considerations to demonstrate how Mini-Minion’s current design supports reliable autonomous operation while allowing for iterative development as additional tasks are pursued.
RoboBoat is an international autonomous surface vehicle competition that challenges student teams to design, build, and test small, unmanned boats capable of completing navigation and perception tasks in real-world marine environments.
Mini-Minion is a roughly 25%-scale autonomous catamaran derived from RobotX’s 16-ft WAM-V platform. Foam-filled TPU pontoons and articulating PETG propulsion pods provide stability in a compact, manufacturable design. Mini-Minion is fully equipped to execute the navigation, perception, and control tasks required throughout the RoboBoat competition.
Team Mini-Minion is an 11-member Mechanical Engineering senior design team organized into Stability, Deck, and Sensor & Systems subgroups, and supported by a primary faculty advisor and experienced Master’s student team leads.
