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.