Focus Area

In the beginning the company was given a task to develop an AEV that would help traverse people from the East Linden area to main part of Columbus. The company was given a kit and had to put some time in to develop the vehicle.

At first the group, had to familiarize itself with the AEV and did some Preliminary R&D. Out of that the group learned how to use the reflectance sensor, the Arduino code program, MATLAB analysis program, and what the company prioritize in design. With this the vision of the AEV was born. The group wanted to create an AEV that was safe and energy efficient.

With the goal in mind, the company then went into Advance R&D and decided to do battery testing and Power Braking vs Coasting. The AEV design was also changed during this period. The AEV wings was moved down and rotated. During the battery testing it was found that the battery becomes more inconsistent after use and that power braking used more power, but was more consistent on stopping the AEV on the proper location. (for more details see Advance R&D section of the website) With this in mind, the group then could use this information in developing the code for Performance Testing.

After Advance R&D the group decided to move on to Performance Testing. For performance test 01 the group had to come up with two designs. Performance test 01 was completed with no errors on AEV 01. When testing AEV 02, it was found that AEV 01 ran more efficient and used less time. AEV 01 used two joules less than AEV 02, during the first part of the track, thus the group decided to continue on with AEV 01. For performance 02 the group had to test two different sets of code and see which one was more efficient. The group had trouble of safely stopping the AEV, therefor the group continued to use the power braking code. (see code section of the website). For the final performance test the AEV was very inconsistent and saw that the battery was a problem. The group decided to change the code and used goFor instead gotoRelative function. That made some parts better, but when the track was switched, the group encountered the same problems as before. Ultimately the group finished the final performance test with some errors, such as not stopping at the correct location and crashing into the bumper coming back down to the loading dock.

Looking back through this project, the group should have used the gotoAbsolute function instead of the goFor function, as it did not fix any problems. A servo motor would probably be implemented on V2 of the product because talking with other companies it seemed that the servo motor help brake the AEV more consistently than a power brake or coasting.