Design Concept

Our design in the real world will ultimately be a modular bus design outlined by the sketches below.

This final sketch is the end product of two initial sketches and user feedback. It consists of fold-out shelving on the side of the bus, as well as, improved security and a widened walkway within the bus for ease of access.

To mimic our concept design, we created the prototype below. We then used our prototype to simulate and test the movements and routes our real world bus would take.

The three most important features of our solution are Affordability, Healthy Product, and Accessibility. In our prototype design, these major design requirements will be shown in the ways described below along with our correlation matrix.

This correlation matrix shows our key design concepts translated into design concepts for our prototype. The circular track served as our mock city streets. This prototype requirement adds to the accessibility requirement of the real world product. The mass, or carrying capacity, of the prototype simulated the expected load of the vehicle. An increased load means more produce for our costumers which equates to greater variety of food options.  When our prototype stopped on the track it simulated a stop made along a mapped out route. The below figure shows our proposed route, and how it equated to the track for testing.

We have two coding programs that allows our prototype to complete both a route on a circular track, and on a straight inclined track with a timed gate. The code for the circular track includes four stops to simulate the bus route in a tight urban environment to ensure maneuverability and stability. The code for the inclined track has the bus making it up a simulated hill, and it having to quickly stop at what could be a stop light. These two codes together shows our design’s ability to operate in the proposed urban environment.