Situation
During Lab 4, the team created a program that would run the AEV on the track and collected data that would evaluate the AEV’s performance. The data was recorded by the Arduino motor controller using EEPROM data that collected the time (milliseconds), current (ADC counts), voltage(ADC counts), wheel counts based on reflectance sensor, and position based on the wheel counts. The data then was downloaded into the computer using the aevDataRecorder in Matlab. With this, the data was converted into physical parameters and performance characteristics. Through this data, a Power(watts) v. Time(seconds) which showed the team the amount of power that was being used every second. With this data, a Power v Distance graph was also shown.
Result/Analysis
Once the data was processed, the team used this to create a graph, figure 1. Figure 1 shows the graph of Power(watts) v. Time(seconds). Looking at the plot, it appears the the yellow test line motor accelerated very quickly (in less than 1 second) and decelerated to a constant power of 5.30 watts for 4 seconds. At this point, it would be better to increase the amount of time that it takes to get to that power. At 4 seconds, the power reduces down to about 3.9 watts and stays constant till about 6 seconds. It then increases abruptly to a power of 18.4 watts and the decreases until a it stays constant at 12.0 watts for about 2 seconds. Then the power goes down to 0 watts. The figure shows that the power stays on even when the propellor is running which is not energy efficient and would lead to higher costs. Also, an increase in time to accelerate the Arduino means that there would be more power consumed. To test this, the team would have to create a program with the celerate() function and one without it to test which is better. The orange line in Figure 1, uses less power, and then in Figure 2, goes farther than the yellow line. For figure 2, the yellow line shows that the the AEV used power but stayed at the same distance, 0. From this, we can tell that the AEV with the orange line is a better pick.
Takeaway
The takeaways from this lab was to see if the celerate() function would be a good addition to the code or not. Another takeaway was that in the figure, it shows that the Arduino uses up a lot of power and increases it very quickly before actually moving down to a constant speed. With this in mind, the team needs to retest this by seeing if letting it get to that power in a longer time helps. Another takeaway is that the speed of the AEV should be controlled so that it does not endanger the safety of the patrons using it.