The PCBs used in our Mars Rover

Yonder Dynamics is a student robotics organization at UC San Diego formally established in Fall 2016. As our primary project, we design and build a Mars rover for the annual University Rover Challenge (URC), a prestigious international competition for college students. Our newest rover, Latency, placed 6th in the world overall at the 2024 URC world finals. Our team qualified for this competition by demonstrating Latency in the following video submission:

Above all, our people are our mission. We believe in developing individuals from the ground up to prepare them for their future endeavors. Now with over sixty active members from a variety of backgrounds, we pride ourselves on inclusivity—robotics is for everyone.

This year we updated our PCBS:

Power Distribution:

The main power distribution board takes in 12V for distribution to the wheel motor drivers and a Jetson for our cameras. The board also converts 12V to 5V for powering smaller components. Additionally, it connects to our separate arm power distribution board to power both the arm and the main chassis during competition.

Arm Power Distribution:

The arm power distribution board receives 12V from the main power distribution board. It supplies power to the motor drivers for all parts of the arm and hand, as well as the arm control board. This separate board allows for testing the arm isolated from the main chassis.

Arm Control:

The arm control board converts 12V to 5V to 3.3V for powering a Raspberry Pi Pico. This is used for testing the arm independently from the rover itself. The control board sends PWM signals to the motor drivers for the arm and hand motors. It also connects to the motor encoders as custom encoder boards for control and feedback.

Encoder Board:

The encoder board uses a magnetic encoder chip to read motor positions. It sends SPI signals to the arm’s Pi Pico for monitoring motor movements. This allows for more accurate arm positioning and movement control.

Science Board:

           The science board is responsible for controlling the components on the rover that are specific to the science mission, in which our team must be equipped to gather and analyze various desert soil samples. Using an Arduino Nano Every and stepper motor driver, the board is able to control the stepper motor that moves the science drill upwards/downwards on our rover to allow our team to be able to effectively drill into the desert terrain for soil samples. Additonally, the board uses the Nano Every to collect data from a light sensor and a temperature/humidity sensor, which our science team can analyze to deduce evidence of life in a sample.