The purpose of this lab is to finish the second program for the AEV. A first program was finished, though this is a basic program, and the team believes that a more efficient program can be made so that the AEV can fulfill the requirement of being more cost effective and efficient.
The new program that is being created has the AEV pump its motors at certain percentages of power and coasting to the gate. There is no action of the motors reversing in order for the AEV to brake, instead, the AEV is to coast to a stop at the appropriate position in front of the gate. The AEV continues the rest of its mission pumping the motors and coasting to a halt. The team hopes that this program will be successful in order to make the AEV more efficient. The initial program accomplished the task of collecting the R2-D2 unit and returning to base, though it accomplished this inefficiently. The motors ran continuously and reversed orientation to act as brakes. The team hopes to be able to produce the same results as this program, while using less power for the AEV.
The task of perfecting the design and ensuring consistency in assembly of the AEV will be performed by Jeffrey. The task of fine-tuning code to perform the task more efficiently will be completed by J.P. The task of documenting the efficiencies of varying codes and design tweaks will be left to Dan and Alex.
In order to create an efficient and cost effective AEV, each iteration of code and vehicle design were tested for efficiency and were systematically selected for highest efficiency and effectiveness of task completion. In Performance Test 3: Final Testing, the code will be fine-tuned to further the efficiency of the code chosen in Performance Test 2.
The team hopes to perfect the more efficient program for the AEV during the upcoming lab. This will require trial and error testing in order to have the AEV coast to a stop in the appropriate places. Due to time constraints, the team will have to make very informed guesses about how the Arduino will react to the code that consists of short bursts of power. Thankfully, the team has had experience doing this and these final tweaks will not be as difficult as first anticipated.