CASE STUDY // SYS-GESTURE-CONTROLLED-VEHICLEValidated Prototype
Wireless Gesture-Controlled Robotic Platform
Human-machine interface (HMI) vehicle controlled via wearable spatial IMU motion tracking.
#EMBEDDED#MECHATRONICS#ROBOTICS
DEVELOPMENT YEAR2024
MY ROLEHardware Wearable Design & Wireless ESP-NOW Telemetry
TEAM STRUCTUREEmbedded Systems Developer
VALIDATION STATUSValidated Prototype
THE ENGINEERING PROBLEM
Conventional joysticks restrict intuitive control in hazardous or remote robotic inspection scenarios.
THE ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION
Built a wearable glove equipped with an MPU6050 IMU that translates wrist tilt angles into real-time directional vehicle motor commands.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW & ARCHITECTURE
Uses ESP-NOW ultra-low latency peer-to-peer protocol between wearable transmitter glove and differential drive robotic rover.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE BLOCK DIAGRAM FLOW:
Wearable Glove (MPU6050 + ESP32) → [ESP-NOW Wireless Telemetry] → Rover Receiver (ESP32) → L298N Motor Driver → High-Torque Motors.
KEY TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS:
- ✓Sub-10ms transmission latency using low-level ESP-NOW radio packets.
- ✓Complementary filter processing pitch/roll angles while filtering out hand tremors.
HARDWARE & ELECTRONICS
- Wearable Motion Glove
- MPU6050 IMU
- ESP32 Microcontrollers
- Differential Rover Chassis
- L298N Motor Driver
SOFTWARE & FIRMWARE
- Embedded C++
- Arduino Core
- ESP-NOW Library
ALGORITHMS & CONTROL LOOPS
- IMU Pitch/Roll Euler Angle Extraction
- Deadband Thresholding
- PWM Motor Speed Mapping
COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS
- ESP-NOW 2.4GHz Direct Wireless
- I2C
ENGINEERING CHALLENGES OVERCOME
- Preventing hand tremor noise from producing erratic rover acceleration spikes.
MY DIRECT CONTRIBUTIONS
- Engineered wearable glove hardware circuit, wrote ESP-NOW telemetry packets, and tuned motion deadband thresholds.
VALIDATED SYSTEM RESULTS
- ▸Demonstrated smooth, natural gesture control of robotic rover movement with immediate physical response.
KEY ENGINEERING LESSONS LEARNED
- ▸Direct radio protocol links like ESP-NOW provide dramatically lower latency than standard Wi-Fi HTTP or Bluetooth serial.