Students:
- Scott Jason,
- Jared Milburn,
- Jonathan Sayre,
- Brandon Schiff
Advisors: O. Hernandez, Y. Wang
Throughout the semester the senior project group has been working on an autonomous vehicle to compete in the 22nd Rochester annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition at Oakland University in Michigan. The semester began with research on all the components that made up the previous year’s vehicle. The team had to learn how the vehicle runs and operates so that they had a better understanding on how to add on and improve. The mechanical engineers were assigned the tasks of improving and designing the frame of the vehicle. To keep an economic mindset, the team chose to keep the 80/20 aluminum as the frame, keeping a lot of the same structure and then adding on to more where necessary. Final designs of the frame are still being determined due to a decision where to access the payload and the laptop. Another aspect of the vehicle being conducted by the mechanical engineers with assistance of the Computer engineers is the drive train of the vehicle. The drive train begins with the Arduino micro-controller sending code to the motor controller to tell how fast the motor to run. While running a gear will be placed on the inside of the tire and an optical encoder will register how often the teeth of the gear appears in a certain time period. This will allow the team to track how fast the tires are moving. This information will be sent back to the micro-controller which will then tell the motor controller to speed up or slow down. This process will continue until the desired speed is met. Using last year’s tires, motors, and batteries, a lot of money is saved on the project. The computer aspect of the project is conducted by the Computer engineers and is being slightly reviewed by the mechanicals. The design process should be completed by the end of the semester with parts being ordered so construction may begin over winter break and testing in the spring semester.