Final Performance Test
For the final part, the AEV need to take the caboose back to the gate, trigger the gate and proceed to starting point. The biggest concern in this part was how well the connection between the AEV and the caboose was. A bad and unstable connection could make the caboose swing and the AEV end up behaving totally out of expectation. For the original connection the group had, the magnet had to be fastened after every run. To solve this, the group moved the magnet backward to reduce the distance between the magnet and the caboose. Although the design was still not perfect, this time, the group was able to get more consistent runs.
Bad connection Adjusted connection
Once the AEV was able to complete the whole performance test, the team started to consider ways to save energy. Considering the finding in performance test 2 that motorSpeed() can save more energy than celerate() which meant achieving to a certain power in less time would be more energy efficient. Thus, the team tried to use relative reasonable higher power for accelerating part like the uphill side to complete the test. The result was surprising and out of expectation. With only 5-10% more power used, the AEV can save almost 30J energy overall.
The orange line was the original lower energy run which had an energy 193.187J consumed, and the blue line was higher energy run which had an energy 166.440J consumed.
Final Run data: