Prototype acquired
A Waveshare WAVE ROVER 4WD arrived and became ERDEN Scout. The scoping decision behind it was to buy a known-good base rather than fabricate a chassis, so that the engineering risk we take on this platform is autonomy and integration rather than mechanical fabrication. Scout is a development platform, not a product candidate: outdoor capable, portable by one person, serviceable with hand tools, and instrumented on every channel we might later need to explain a failure.
What we learned
- Deciding what the platform is not removed more schedule risk than any technical choice made since.
- Serviceability is a design requirement, not an afterthought, when the same unit will be rebuilt dozens of times.
- Starting from purchased hardware means the first weeks are spent reading and measuring rather than building. That felt slow and was not.
Next steps
- Full teardown and inventory before any modification.
- Establish the engineering log as a public record from the first entry rather than retrofitting one later.
Hardware referenced
- WAVE ROVER 4WDWaveshare4WD skid-steer base, integrated ESP32 driver board
Decisions referenced
Use a commercial rover base rather than fabricating a chassis
ERDEN Scout is built on a commercial 4WD rover base so early effort goes into autonomy and integration rather than mechanical fabrication.
- The engineering risk worth taking on Scout is autonomy, not sheet metal.
- A known-good base means mechanical failures are comparable against other people's experience with the same platform.
- Rebuilding the platform frequently is expected; a purchasable base makes that cheap.
- Fabricate a custom chassis — Rejected — months of mechanical work before a single line of autonomy code runs.
- Repurpose an RC vehicle — Rejected — insufficient payload capacity and no serviceable power architecture.
Outcome Sound so far, with an unanticipated benefit: the base carries far more integrated electronics than expected, which shortened the power work considerably.
Images
As delivered, before teardown.