ME 222B — Mechatronics and Intelligent Systems¶
Fall 2026/2027 · Division of Mechanical Engineering
This site holds the lab manual: ten 90-minute sessions in which you build a four-motor autonomous car on an ESP32, then make a fleet of them work together. For course policies, assessment weights, and the lecture schedule, see the Syllabus.
Lab dates and room not yet set
Items marked TODO still need instructor input — lab dates and room,
office hours, emergency contacts, and ThingsBoard details.
Start here¶
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Do this before Week 1. Installs the ESP32 toolchain and proves your laptop can talk to the board. ~45 minutes.
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Batteries, powered motors, a vehicle that drives itself off the bench. Sign off before Lab 1.
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First session. Run four motors, drive 4 metres, and find out that your car does not go straight.
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All ten weeks, with the practical focus and deliverable for each.
The thread running through the course¶
Week 1 gives you a problem you cannot yet solve: send the same PWM command to both sides and the car still curves away from the line.
You cannot fix it in Week 1, because you have no way to measure what the wheels are actually doing. So:
Week 1 measure the problem drift over 4 m
Week 2 measure the wheels PWM–speed curves, dead zone
Weeks 3-5 measure the world distance, heading, filtered data
Week 6 learn to correct P → PI → PID
Week 7 SOLVE IT re-run the Week 1 test and beat it
Weeks 8-10 scale it up telemetry, missions, a coordinated fleet
Keep your Week 1 drift number. You will be compared against it.
How the lab pages work¶
Each page follows the same shape:
| Section | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Practical focus | What the 90 minutes is spent doing |
| Objectives | What you should be able to do by the end |
| Procedure | Numbered steps, with tables to fill in |
| Checkpoints | Stop and get a TA before continuing |
| Deliverable | The milestone for that week |
Checkpoints are not optional
A checkpoint means stop and get a TA. They sit where a mistake is expensive — a reversed battery, a car about to drive off a bench, a motor wired backwards before a measured run. Powering past one without a signature is how kit gets destroyed and data gets wasted.
Getting help¶
- In lab — ask a TA. That is what they are there for.
- Outside lab — email amr.abdelhamid@kaust.edu.sa.
- Something broken? — check Troubleshooting first. If it is genuinely dead, tell a TA so it gets logged and replaced.