We continue the development of our "ddbot" project.

Progress: we have built up the second layer of chassis for the robot, as shown below. 

We selected a dual-channel DC motor drive module to drive two motors simultaneously and provide useful voltage outputs like 3.3V, and 5V for other modules. We chose ESP32 as the microcontroller, which provides low-level interfaces such as I2C, SPI, PWM, etc. It can control devices with these interfaces, e.g. PWM for adjusting motor speed, and I2C for reading IMU data. A 6-axis IMU sensor is included to measure the car's attitude. For easy setup and flexibility, we use a breadboard for wire connections for now.

Plan: next, we try to set up the third layer of the chassis, adding a camera module for vision-based tasks and a Pi (a.k.a. single board computer) for high-level central control. If time permits, we will add the fourth layer to include a 2D Lidar as well. Stay tuned...