Welcome Page

Table of Contents

 

1. Project Management

A. Team Working Agreement

B. Individual Responsibility Agreement

C. Project Schedule

D. Meeting Notes

E. Conclusion and Recommendations

 

2. Business Plan

A. First Presentation

B. Second Presentation

C. Final Presentation

 

3. Software Documentation

A. Introduction

B. User Manual

C. Program Description for Developers

D. Evolution of Design

E. Final Program with Comments

F. Discussion

G. References

 

Executive Summary

As there are more vehicles on the road today, traffic has become more congested and there has been several research attempts to develop new transportation for the City of Columbus. The advanced energy vehicle (AEV) prototype was developed which transports commuters suspended overhead above ground traffic via a monorail track. The overall goal is to transport commuters between three locations of Columbus: Easton, Polaris and Linden.

The AEV must be able to operate both forward and backward along the monorail and must stop gradually at each location to “pick up” and “drop off” passengers. The main components of the AEV prototype are the Arduino board, two propellers, sensors, wheels and other supporting materials. The approach used to obtain the final design was to conduct screening comparisons to pursue the best prototype from others initially considered and energy optimization of the best prototype by the end of advanced research and development in preparation for performance testing.

Initially, a reference prototype was provided to test program commands/coding sequences and external wheel sensors to understand responses and confirm functionality. A list of prioritized criteria (weight reduction, center of mass location, thrust vector location, minimal energy usage and safety) was established for the AEV by group members and each prototype was tested using the concept screening and scoring method against it.

With the final team prototype selected from advanced research and development optimized energy analysis experiments, performance tests were conducted to have the AEV operating at the three stop locations. A major finding of the performance tests was that the same programming produced variable performance results of the AEV. Therefore, C++ control loop coding strategies were developed based upon energy source and monorail friction force velocity impact factors to achieve the same performance results.