Preliminary R&D Deliverables

Lab 1

  1. The electric motors used have slight resistance at low speeds and therefore might impact the performance of the AEV. The propellers did not start to spin imminently, most likely due to the fact that the motors were not generating enough power to spin the propellers.
  2. Some of the basic functions that were used are:
    • celerate(m,p1,p2,t);   Accelerates or decelerates motor (m) from power 1 (p1) to power 2 (p2) in (t) seconds
    • motorSpeed(m,p);   Sets motor (m) at power (p)
    • goFor(t);   Runs motors at initialized state for (t) seconds
    • brake(m);   Cuts power to motor (m)
    • reverse(m);   Reverses the polarity of motor (m)
    • goToRelativePosition(n);   Continues previous command for (n) marks from current position
    • goToAbsolutePosition(n);   Continues previous command for (n) marks relative to starting position of AEV

Lab 2

  1. The commands used in this lab may limit the success of the AEV. For example, the brake(m) command does not stop the AEV from moving. It just turns off the motors but the wheels can still keep rolling. This will have to be accounted for while testing but can be hard to control. One way to combat this issue is to reverse the motors for a short period of time to counteract the forward motion of the AEV.
  2. The reflectance sensors count marks on the wheel which helps to determine how far the AEV has traveled. They are important so we can make the AEV travel a precise distance so the AEV can have to best performance.

See ExternalSensorsOutside under AEV Codes for the code associated with the reflectance sensors.

Lab 3

See AEV Designs Page for sketches and designs.

Lab 4

See AEV Energy Plots for graphs and AEV Codes for the codes associated with the Power vs Time and Power vs Distance plots.

Lab 5

The criteria we used for the screening and scoring were Balance, Safety, Weight, Efficiency, and Appearance. We chose these criteria because we thought they were the most important parts of the AEV design. Safety was our highest wighted criteria in the concept scoring. We believe safety is the first priority so that we don’t lost money or lives due to safety violations. Efficiency is our next highest weighted because we wanted to make sure our AEV gets the job done as efficient as possible. The other criteria are important too but not as important as safety and efficiency. Our goal is to go with the two highest scoring designs which are Design 4 and Design 5. Both of these AEV designs scored a 3.5 or above out of 5. We will follow through with these designs while also taking small ideas from where the other designs scored high and incorporate them to come up with the best AEV we can.

See AEV Concept Screening/Scoring for the rating tables that were used and AEV Designs for the designs mentioned above.

Lab 6

Participated in committee meetings and grant proposal vote. Began to brainstorm methods for testing power braking, coasting, and battery usage.