We are LABO 404, a student robotics team from Belgium.
Our primary goal is to design and build fully autonomous robots for the Eurobot competition.
We started this team to challenge ourselves beyond the classroom, bridge the gap between theory and hardware, and share our passion for high-performance embedded systems.
For this year’s Eurobot, we worked on a new autonomous robot designed for precision and speed. Our main focus was on miniaturization and integration. We wanted to demonstrate that a student team could move away from bulky off-the-shelf modules to create a fully custom, control system.
We designed a custom PCB integrating the ESP32-S3 SoC directly. This allowed us to handle complex sensor data and Wi-Fi communication while maintaining a very small footprint.
For the first time, we utilized a 4-layer configuration. Moving to 4 layers was essential for signal integrity, allowing us to have dedicated ground and power planes to support the high-speed signals of the SoC and our motor drivers.
We used KiCad for the entire design process. In combination with KiCad, AISLER proved to be an essential and highly efficient partner because of their Direct Plug-in for KiCad.
We implemented a “star” grounding strategy and carefully managed trace widths for our power-hungry components. The transition from 2 to 4 layers was made incredibly smooth by AISLER’s ability to handle native KiCad files directly.
We learned a lot about SMD soldering for fine-pitch components (like the ESP32-S3) and the importance of thermal dissipation on multi-layer boards.
Our favorite feature is the Rendering Guarantee and PCB Viewer. When you are designing your first 4-layer board with a custom SoC, the margin for error is zero. Since we upload our KiCad files directly, seeing the photorealistic render of our board before production gave us total confidence that our vias, power planes, and footprints were exactly as intended. It makes the iteration process extremely fast and reliable.
