Team Q is still working on brainstorming ideas to improve upon the sample AEV design. The team will use the following methods to accomplish this goal [1].
In developing the code, the team created a working program for each individual exercise. As each one had different requirements, all code differed from each other. However, they all shared the same commands. Some of these include:
Celerate: Accelerates and decelerates either motor
Motorspeed: Initializes speed of the motor(s)
goFor: Runs motors for specified amount of time at certain amount of power
Brake: Cuts power to specified motor(s)
Reverse: Reverses polarity of specified motor(s)
After coding the Arduino multiple times, we found that optimizations were able to be made, such as removing redundant brake commands. We also found that we had to reverse the polarity in the beginning of our code in order to get the motors rotating in the correct direction. These changes are evident in the code provided below.
Exercise 1:
The code above was to familiarize ourselves with the functions of the Arduino and how to code in the future. It includes basic function calls such as celerate, brake, goFor, reverse and motorSpeed.
Exercise 2 served the purpose of testing out the function goToAbsolutePosition(), which helped us gauge how to use it in order to accurately move our AEV a certain amount of distance.
Exercise 3:
The code for Exercise 3 above was used to actually get our AEV tested on the track. While not evident from this one screen capture, the team had to adjust the power level of the motors in order to get the AEV moving, as too little was seen to not move it at all.