CaterBot

CaterBot is a redesigned caterpillar-drive agricultural robot with a modular payload architecture. The original concept (a fixed-function bot) was re-engineered to accept swappable sensor and tool modules — so the same chassis can do soil sampling, crop monitoring, or targeted spraying depending on the fitted module.

Agricultural robots are expensive because they're single-purpose. Farmers in India can't justify buying three machines when one field season might need all three functions. The modularity redesign had to maintain structural integrity under uneven terrain loading — which required proper FEA, not guessing.

Led the mechanical redesign in SolidWorks, defined the modular docking interface, ran ANSYS static structural analysis on the chassis under worst-case terrain loading, and built the Unity 3D simulation with realistic terrain and physics for demonstrating multi-module operation.

ANSYS analysis confirmed structural safety factor >2.5 under all tested load cases. Unity simulation demonstrated all three module configurations with realistic terrain interaction. Project presented at department-level showcase.