WHAT & WHY
WHAT IT IS
An embedded software architecture and web-based telemetry command station engineered for autonomous planetary rover competition hardware.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Ground control operators and robotics engineers monitoring rover telemetry, LiDAR point clouds, and waypoint navigation.
PROBLEM SOLVED
Replaces laggy serial monitors with a real-time 3D web control station streaming GPS position, motor thermals, and LiDAR obstacle maps over Wi-Fi.
PAIN POINT & CONTEXT
Planetary rover competition hardware requires real-time telemetry control across unreliable wireless links with zero command latency.
PROJECT GOALS
Develop ROS 2 nodes for LiDAR obstacle detection and autonomous waypoint navigation.
Engineer a WebSockets telemetry bridge streaming data at 30 Hz.
Build a 3D web ground station dashboard displaying orientation and sensor telemetry.
USER INSIGHTS
INSPIRATION & BENCHMARKS
NASA JPL Open Source Rover ground station telemetry interfaces.
KEY USER INSIGHTS
Operators need emergency stop hotkeys, clear signal strength indicators, and 3D attitude (pitch/roll/yaw) visual gauges.
Created a ROS 2 Galactic navigation stack communicating with a Next.js ground station UI via rosbridge WebSockets.
3D ROVER TELEMETRY VIEWPORT
Real-time 3D orientation visualization using Three.js synced with IMU sensor feeds.
AUTONOMOUS WAYPOINT NAVIGATOR
Interactive map click-to-navigate interface sending GPS waypoints to ROS 2 Nav2 stack.
HARDWARE HEALTH MONITOR
Real-time thermal, battery voltage, and motor current telemetry gauges.
DATA PIPELINE & FLOW
Onboard Raspberry Pi 4 / Nvidia Jetson runs ROS 2 nodes, broadcasting telemetry payloads via WebSockets to Next.js ground station.
BUILD TIMELINE
Built ROS 2 nodes for motor drive, IMU sensor telemetry, and GPS navigation.
Implemented rosbridge protocol streaming telemetry data to Web clients.
Built Three.js rover orientation model and real-time dashboard.
Deployed on physical rover hardware during national robotics competition finals.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
Wireless packet drop and high jitter on outdoor 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi links.
Implemented binary delta-encoded WebSocket telemetry payloads and client packet interpolation.
LiDAR costmap rendering lag on web browsers.
Decimated 2D point cloud resolution before piping to browser WebGL canvas.
SYSTEM OUTCOMES
Finalist in National Robotics Challenge with autonomous waypoint navigation.
Maintained sub-30ms telemetry link latency across 200-meter wireless range.
Zero hardware system crashes during competition runs.
LEARNINGS & ROADMAP
KEY LEARNINGS
Robotics software engineering requires defensive fail-safe logic (auto emergency stop) when physical hardware is on the line.
FUTURE ROADMAP (V2.0)
- SLAM 3D mesh reconstruction.
- Robotic arm inverse kinematics web controller.
- 5G cellular telemetry fallback link.
