When creating our AEV, we at Group O chose categories to focus on that were important to you, the consumer. The categories that we feel are important in designing a quality AEV are speed, energy efficiency, maintenance, and consistency. By designing our AEV to perform well in these categories, Group O has developed an AEV that is well worth your time and money.
Speed
Speed is an important category because we are creating a vehicle that is trying to get from point A to point B. As the saying goes, “time is money,” and that is true. The longer the AEV takes to travel, the higher the cost of the run is. Our AEV completes the track in only 39.43 seconds compared to the class average of 48.63 seconds. As you can see this gives us an advantage over our competitors, and it will save you money overall.
Energy Efficiency
Energy Efficiency is an important design consideration because the more energy an AEV uses per run, the more expensive that AEV is to use. Because low energy ratings leads to lower costs, Group O designed an AEV that is very energy efficient in order to save the consumer costs. Our AEV used only 204.5 Joules for the run compared to the class average of 219.9 Joules. Once again our AEV is outperforming the competitors.
Maintenance
Maintenance is a category that was focused on because we felt that creating an AEV that was easy to maintain and would last a long time without problems was a key component in designing a quality product for the consumer. To accomplish this, we limited the amount of parts that went into creating the AEV. The base used in our design is a solid T-shaped piece. This limits the amounts of part that are held together, which limits the overall cost, and eliminates area where pieces could potentially loosen from each other or need maintenance to stay held together.
Consistency
Consistency is an important quality for the AEV because if the AEV cannot consistently make it through the gate and connect safely with the caboose, it will not be safe to use. To make our AEV run consistently and safely, we implemented a servo to act as a brake. With this addition, our AEV consistently stops in the sensor zone for the gate, and it consistently connects safely with the caboose.
Overall, Group O’s AEV has one of the best designs on the market. It is a great value for the consumer because it is both cost effective due to time and energy costs and safe due to the low maintenance and high consistency.