Mission Concept Goals:
Create a working AEV, using design and programming skills, that can complete a series of tasks, with specific criteria.
Complete a series of deliverables to the Smart City Grant Staff to keep them informed of our progress towards the final AEV.
There are many areas to focus on for the AEV with only enough time to focus on a few key things we want our AEV to accomplish. We want our AEV to be aesthetically pleasing, use the least amount of energy possible, easy to control, and inexpensive. The second and last points are there to save money, being inexpensive obviously saves money, and since we have to pay for the energy used by the AEV during the run, being energy efficient also saves money. In order to be able to actually implement this AEV, it needs to look nice so people would actually ride it, hence the importance of the AEV being aesthetically pleasing. Being easy to control is also a very important concept as it ensures the safety of the AEV, everyone on board, and makes the coding of this automated vehicle much easier as well.
Accomplishing the Goals:
Our team used the engineering design process to help design the safest, most efficient AEV possible. This process will consisted of finding the problem and representing it, planning and designing the AEV, implementing our plan, and then reflecting and evaluating how well our plan worked.
In order to complete the goals along with the deliverables, in time, our group met at least once every week on Friday at 9:35 AM. If there were at least two members who were able to meet, there could have been an additional meeting outside of the Friday meeting. These extra meetings were set up through the Group I GroupMe account with meeting notes being kept by Ryan Burrows. Transference of AEV knowledge and ideas between Group I and Group O was done either in person (Friday at 9:35 AM or another scheduled meeting) or through the Dreese Data Systems GroupMe account. Each team member participated equally in the project; however, when multiple tasks could be completed at once, Ryan Burrows and Alec Glenwright worked on the designing of the AEV, while Vincent Bello and Mitchell Mullholand worked on the programming of the Arduino. These sub-groups were created based off the fact of each group consisting of a pair of roommates, making communication between the individuals in the sub-groups fast and easy.