My main goals were as follows

-Better encoders

-Use arm with some sort of RTOS

-Smaller and faster

-Wireless debugging

In the Japanese micro mouse competition I figured out that most of the competitors use small motors with built in encoders. This would have been perfect for my robot too so I set out to try and find out where in the blazes they buy them from. Turns out most of them come from a Swiss company named Faulhaber. However these motors cost about 100$ a pop! Too much for me. I settled on Pololu's magnetic encoders. 

These little guys will get me twelve tick per motor revolution which will then be multiplied by the gear ratio. With a 50:1 motor that's 600 ticks per wheel revolution!

I chose an STM32 chip for the micro controller since I have a STM32 dev board to play with. It should be a huge step up from an AVR. I choose freertos for similar reasons, I have experience with it on an ESP32.

For wireless debugging I'm planing to use a simple Bluetooth module that interfaces using UART. I'm looking at the 

I'm not looking to make a robot that would be competitive on the international level. This bot is destined for the east coast competition which it not nearly as competitive. Should I accomplish my goals I believe it would be the best bot there, at least mechanically.  The bot is also intended to be a platform for me to experiment and play around with creating a well integrated system. With the sensors I plan to place on it it should be able to be a little more than just a micro mouse robot.

Now with the motors selected I can start working on the design in CAD.