A two-wheeled balancing robot was created to map a maze autonomously and calculate the shortest path. The maze was bounded by LED strips, and up to 3 differently coloured beacons could be placed around the maze beforehand. The beacons must be powered through a carefully optimised DC grid by solar power. There was a budget of £60 for the robot. An FPGA-based camera system must be used. Other optical sensors were permitted, but no other cameras. The methods employed include designing an advanced embedded system, hardware-based image processing, scalable cloud infrastructure and optimal energy distribution systems.
