# Scratchy: A Lightweight Modular Autonomous Robot for Robotic Competitions

## TL;DR

Scratchy is a cost-effective, modular autonomous robot designed for student competition use, featuring rapid assembly, versatile sensors, and capabilities for mapping, object detection, and manipulation.

## Contribution

It introduces a lightweight, easy-to-assemble robot with integrated sensors and software tailored for low-budget robotics competitions.

## Key findings

- Rapid assembly in under one hour
- Fits into standard luggage for easy transport
- Supports mapping, object detection, and manipulation

## Abstract

We present Scratchy---a modular, lightweight robot built for low budget competition attendances. Its base is mainly built with standard 4040 aluminium profiles and the robot is driven by four mecanum wheels on brushless DC motors. In combination with a laser range finder we use estimated odometry -- which is calculated by encoders -- for creating maps using a particle filter. A RGB-D camera is utilized for object detection and pose estimation. Additionally, there is the option to use a 6-DOF arm to grip objects from an estimated pose or generally for manipulation tasks. The robot can be assembled in less than one hour and fits into two pieces of hand luggage or one bigger suitcase. Therefore, it provides a huge advantage for student teams that participate in robot competitions like the European Robotics League or RoboCup. Thus, this keeps the funding required for participation, which is often a big hurdle for student teams to overcome, low. The software and additional hardware descriptions are available under: https://github.com/homer-robotics/scratchy.