ECE 302: The Ballet Robot and Course Car

Fall 2026 · ECE 302 Robotic & Autonomous Systems Lab, Princeton

Drift: Engineering to Between.

PSoC 5LPEmbedded CServos (3 per arm)SolderingXBee telemetryUARTPWM and UDB timers

A robot mounted on the course car that reads hand gestures and answers in ballet: five fingers for the five arm positions, a fist for a pirouette.

Team and role: 2-person group (Lu + lab partner)

Timeline

Oct 2026Proposal submittedAbstract through parts list, via Gradescope.

Decisions

Chose: Mount the robot on the already-built course car

Reuses the semester's work.

Chose: Physical PSoC reset button returning arms to bras bas

Bras bas is deliberately distinct from 1st position, a choreographic distinction encoded in hardware.

Chose: Three servos per arm: shoulder, elbow, front-to-side

Chose: Ignore gestures mid-spin; hold-to-confirm

Prevents false triggers.

Chose: Spin = the car driving a full circle

Rejected: Separate turntable

The car underneath

The course car is an autonomous car on a PSoC 5LP, built from soldering iron to telemetry, with ISRs, a debouncer component, PWM and UDB timers, and UART at 115200. It is the chassis the Ballet Robot rides on.

Chose: Telemetry over LCD: stream variables over XBee

Rejected: LCD debugging

See why the car misbehaved, not just that it did.

All projects