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ME235: Candy Crawler
Candy Crawler is a small autonomous rover we built in ME235 that follows users and dispenses candy while demonstrating real embedded control work.
Background
Candy Crawler is a small autonomous rover that follows people and drops candy on command. It was fun to demo, but it was also a serious controls and systems integration exercise. The build combines 3D printed mechanics, analog and digital sensing, and a LabVIEW front panel for real time supervision.
Technical architecture
Firmware on a dual core ESP32 handles ultrasonic ranging, TCP links, interrupts, and timer callbacks in C and C++, so the vehicle can track users from about 10 cm to 150 cm with stable loop timing. The LabVIEW GUI wraps those streams into a simple interface for tuning and demos, showing that the embedded stack and desktop control layer stayed synchronized under live use.