10/10 - 10/17 Continue of Research and Rapid Prototyping

The last two weeks have included more research into the concept of BLDC motors and their integration into the system with the respect to how we will control the motors simultaneously without the use of a differential to help mitigate problems when the bogie comes to a turn junction. Several elements of tracking are also being discussed with Furman and various other members from the other full scale design teams with where we will be able to place our tracking sensors to determine where the bogie is at all time steps to ensure we know where the bogie is and code accordingly based on user input and where the bogie is on the track. Without having a differential leads to many difficulties in our design of a control system. With the use of ultracapacitiors, we will need to vary the amount of voltage and current coming the the DC/DC converter to change how fast the hub motors will spin to induce what a differential role is which is to slow down and speed up opposite wheels in a turn to mitigate the forces acting on the car and avoid the bogie from jerking and possibly causing unwanted stresses that could be detrimental to the system as a whole. We plan on ordering a few BLDC motors to get a rough concept on how to control them simultaneously to make them act as if they are attached by an axle and help start sorting out he bird's next of wires. We also anticipate keeping the motors powered at all times unless docked into a station and controlling them through an alternate circuit that is connected through the controller to the motor to avoid differing voltages that could possibly fry our equipment such as our Arduinos and other fragile sensors and equipment. We plan to meet this coming Friday to hash out our ideas and slides for our second Presentation to present how we plan to attack these various problems the rest of the semester and moving into next semester.

Update 10/4/18 Advancement on Control System for Full Scale Bogie

For Senior Project, we focused on researching what sensors and modules will be useful to obtain the design specifications for the full scale model. I started researching various electrical hardware such as optocouplers, relays, and switches to determine what plausible configurations there are for the system. The project is still in early project development where I have to research along with my team members system hardware so we can create a system that accomplishes what we want it to do but keep it clean and modular. The ability to switch out faulty wires, Arduinos, and other electrical components on the fly will save us a lot of time during debugging and prototyping. Labeling all the parts will help us figure out what pieces could be malfunctioning if the bogie is not performing the way it is intended. I will continue to research further electrical components to create a proper block diagram that will accomplish at least our motor system and after the motor system is working, the next step will be to install encoders and other location devices so the bogie will be able to traverse the track in a precise and accurate manner.