https://www.columbus.gov/smartcity/information/
The city of Columbus, Ohio was recently given a grant in order for it to become America’s first Smart City. The city recruited some of its brightest engineers to create a new type of vehicle: the Advanced Energy Vehicle or AEV. The main goal of this vehicle is to transport people from the Linden area to the commercial district of Polaris.
The main goal of Team C was to create an original design of safe and efficient vehicle that would help bring Columbus closer to its goal of becoming a Smart City.
Approach: Team C began the project by testing a variety of AEV designs and codes. After much thought and design screening and scoring, the team ultimately decided on a vertical design for the AEV. The priorities for the design were efficiency and safety. This design consisted of a t-shaped base connected to an l-shaped arm with two wheels at the top, to motors on the back end, and one side containing a battery and the other side containing the arduino. Team C chose this design because it had good aerodynamics (thus increasing efficiency), was lightweight, and was innovative. The next step for the team was to create the code for the AEV. The original approach of the team was to use the simple goFor command, and let the AEV coast to stop. However, this created much inconsistency, so the team tested both absolute and relative positioning, and concluded absolute positioning worked best to maximize consistency. The team also opted to use power breaking to stop the AEV. Throughout much trial and error, many designs, and the perfection of the code, Team C was able to create an efficient, safe, and practical AEV very similar to the one first envisioned, that was able to successfully complete the journey from Linden to Polaris thus helping the smart city vision of Columbus.