Justin Parra

Antigravitieee · 1st place, IEEE Montclair Micromouse Competition 2026

Justin Parra

Electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers. I design the boards, write the firmware and tune the robots.

Take it apart

Antigravitieee

Ten parts, one maze-solver. Pick any part to watch it spin and read the code that runs it.

    PCB and base plate from our own EasyEDA and print files. Motors and modules drawn to their datasheet sizes.

    Three trophies and three IEEE certificates on a lab bench, with the three winning robots between them

    First place

    2026 IEEE Montclair Micromouse Competition, October 10. Rutgers teams took first, second and third; Antigravitieee is the first-place certificate.

    Search

    The first run maps the maze one cell at a time with flood fill, re-planning at every wall the IR sensors find.

    500 Hz motion loop on its own core

    Speed run

    The second run plans the fastest path with Dijkstra over the saved map, cutting diagonals and chaining smooth curves instead of stopping at corners.

    167 reads per second, per IR sensor

    Holding the middle

    The side sensors and the steering loop, running the robot's own numbers. Push it toward a wall.

    The two 90° IR beams: distance to each wallThe path it took over the last secondAntigravitieee in a 168 mm maze corridor, drawn to its measured size. Every 2 ms the firmware turns the difference between the two side readings into a steering angle (wall-centring P 35, D 3.5, capped at 25°, and left alone within 5% of the middle), and at the 180 mm/s search speed it drifts back to the centre in about a second and a half. The near wall is drawn whole; the readout is the same model the motion runs on.

    Work

    A teammate in a red shirt sets a robot down in a wooden practice maze, a laptop with code beside it
    Tuning on the practice maze in the Rutgers lab.
    Antigravitieee from above: a black PCB with an ESP32-S3 board in the middle, six IR sensors in black heat-shrink around the front and a LiPo battery at the back
    Antigravitieee before Montclair.

    About

    I'm the president of Rutgers Micromouse, where 40-plus students build robots that solve mazes on their own. I design boards in KiCad, Altium and EasyEDA, write C and C++ for ESP32-S3 and STM32, and tune control loops on the maze floor until the robot stops touching walls.

    Based in
    Dunellen, New Jersey
    Studying
    B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers–New Brunswick, December 2027
    Speaks
    English and Spanish
    Looking for
    2027 internships and co-ops, and new-grad roles in embedded, hardware and robotics

    Experience

    • President and lead firmware/hardware engineer, Rutgers Micromouse2024–now
    • Electronics engineering lead, IEEE VEX division2024–now
    • Engineering intern, LPT-KEYPAK2024
    • Grew the team's active membership by 900%40+ members
    • Corporate sponsorship raised for the team$2,500+

    Honors

    • 1st place, IEEE Montclair Micromouse Competition2026
    • 2nd place, Rowan Regional Micromouse Competition2025
    • Selected competitor, StarkHacks at Purdue2026
    • Packaging throughput raised at LPT-KEYPAK+30%
    • Equipment-related defects cut at LPT-KEYPAK−15%

    Tools

    • C, C++, Python, TypeScript, MATLAB, VerilogCode
    • ESP32-S3, STM32, FreeRTOS, PlatformIOEmbedded
    • KiCad, Altium Designer, EasyEDA, LTspiceBoards
    • Oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, SMD reworkBench
    • PID and cascade PID, flood fill, A*, DijkstraControl
    A practice maze of wooden walls laid out on the floor of a Rutgers engineering lab, two students working beside it
    The practice maze on the lab floor, the week of Montclair.

    Let's build something

    Hiring for embedded, hardware or robotics? Write to me.

    LinkedIn GitHub Résumé