Help please on how to improve a radio contolled animal for a uni project?

For a university project I have to analysis and redesign a radio control toy animal.



It has a range of about 5 metres, weak motors and research has shows people would want better power and range.

Currently it runs on capacitors charged from the remote control which only last about 3 minutes



Also can turn its tail (channel 3)



At the moment it has 3 channels... 2 of which give tank like control.



Both forward - forward

Both Back - Back



One back one forward - turn or spin.



It also has a 3rd motor which turns its tail.



I have only started electronics and knowledge is very very basic.





How would I go about increasing the radio range so it can go further. (i think it had a Crystal oscillator in the circuitry.)



About 5 metres is very small 30 meters would be ok so not talking full on plane controls as need to be cheap.



And what would be involved in adding another channel switch on or off for say a squeak sound or light up eyes



Change from capacitors to batteries and what would be involved in bigger motors.Help please on how to improve a radio contolled animal for a uni project?
Without a block diagram or schematics of the existing setup or a description of the parameters of the project it's difficult to know where to point you, bearing in mind you could get an off the shelf 4 channel RC setup with servos for not very many pennies. Do you have to design and build the TX/RX for example.If you have to build from scratch there are circuits where you can build a 9 channel encoder/decoder using a simple CD4017 counter chip. Have a look at http://www.rc-airplane-world.com/radio-c ok it's for planes but it describes RC basics like powering things with NiCads and not capacitors.