Week 7 - Second Presentations

Our second presentation was due this week. We presented the systems we've decided to use. For our project we will be starting with developing two loops, and then hopefully expanding to four by the end of the year. We would also like to have 10 carts on the track however we may only push for 5 until those a ready to not clutter the track. We also decided to go back to using Xbee communication boards to keep it simple, however we will have someone to research WiFi communications since it will be more expandable later to where the project may want to head one day. We will also be 3D printing the chassis/body of the cabin, much like modern cars so it will be lightweight and aesthetically pleasing. Finally we will reduce the ultrasonic sensor count to one per vehicle, and we will be using two optical encoders for reading bar codes for positioning.

That was our presentation, after the presentation we had some time with the small scale track again and the measurements for the cabin needs to be changed since that was just an estimate. We also started to fix the second vehicle so we have multiple vehicles to work with. Now we just need to build a multi-loop track to explore and troubleshoot possible problems when it comes to locations. We are going to be on a better track now.

Week 6 - Work Time and AnSys Speaker

This we we got time to work on the project and have some time with the small scale model. We took another look at the model and see what we can change. Nasrat and I also talked to Dr. Furman about the route we should take for the communications and locations services for the small scale track. As our discussion holds we decided to go with WiFi modules and drop the local positioning system since it is somewhat out of the scope of the project.

After our time with the scale model we also had a speaker talk to us about AnSys and how it can be applied. I didn't think it was very productive, since I knew its potential, I just didn't know how to actually use it. I guess learning that I can probably get it for free would be good. It may also prove useful for the small scale for the stress analysis of the support beams, other than that there isn't much stress analysis I see that we need to do for the small scale. Maybe something to see how the track will warp.

Week 5 - Presentations and other developments

This week was the second and last week for presentations for the first wave of presentations. This week we went, and though I didn't think I was too bad Deocampo said our presentation was disappointing, and that Dr. Furman was angry with it. I think he might have been talking about the Small Scale Solar team which I was not in charge of. For some reason the solar team disbanded and small scale solar is joining us again. Anyways, not very happy to receive the response we did but I guess it just means we need to improve on a few things.

Anyways since most of the research has been done for the small scale project our goal will be to turn the parts the previous years have created into a working model. After our presentation and Dr. Furman criticizing us for using a new communication component, and saying "what do you mean there's no controls from the Korean team?" made me thing. First of all Nasrat meant location's system, and second so far I have only ever seen the pod run the entire circumference of the track and not use the "shortcut" diagonal track. Which lead me to think perhaps the current systems relies on counting magnet sensors to find its way. The problem with this design now is that though hall sensors are fast they are essentially only transmitting one bit of information, and for the small scale to work the way we want to its going to have to be more sophisticated which means when an interrupt like that happens we need to get more out of it.

From this point forward we will be doing more development work on the cart, Nasrat will be researching his location system, which if he does not do in time, my bar code system will also be in development which can cover for locations. I think a better idea now would be to think of the bar code system as a replacement for the hall sensors. The track team is doing well in their research since Ernest left a lot of information behind for us to work with, and the cart team will be first making the bogey more reliable. Whether or not they decide to change to a swinging arm or simply change the link between the servo and arms. The controls team will also start messing with the sensors that need to see which ones they want to use. I personally purchased a CC3000 wifi shield for the Arduino and I will be figuring out how to program the main controls in Java since that would be the easiest for us to create a GUI with and since it runs on a virtual machine there will not be limitations on what operating system it will be used on.

Another thing that was not mentioned on the presentation was that I wanted to use a WiFi shield because its will be easier for us to work with, since its a more powerful communications protocol. I have nothing against the Xbee but why would we use one of those if there is something more powerful which later developments can be made on. If for any reason a lot more data has to be transferred, or if the model expands beyond 10 carts then they will need to change it again anyways so why not now? It's definitely not a cost issue since both chips cost around the same depending on which one you buy. The one I was proposing also had a breadboard area which we can put our other components on to stream line the design. The way they made it last year or over the summer has three levels of shields, one which is the xbee and the other only has a few components on it. Why not put it all on one board? This point wasn't addressed during the presentation I guess because there was some miscommunication, however I hope people under stand my decision now.

Design Proposal - Stations

After the first wave of presentations I noticed one of the groups had an interesting image of a station. The image I saw was quite similar to the top image in my sketch below. It is definitely not to scale as everything is out of proportions. However this is not a display of my artistic skill rather than a design I stumbled upon in my mind. The image I saw depicted cars lined up in the fashion I have drawn below, and it lead me to think this is the answer. Originally, my thought for the station design would simply be a single track where a pod stopped, left the passenger off, and then pick up a new one. However this leads to problems where passengers might get on the wrong cart, and are then blocked by the empty car ahead of them.

My design here is to have a set of short parallel tracks where the pods can be parked. In my sketch there are only three however this can be expanded indefinitely, perhaps a second floor of them could work too . The idea here is to create a space where each cart can be parked and wait for passengers to get on. There would be a down ramp to arrive at the station, and an up ramp to get back to the track. This would allow dirty or damaged carts to stay at the nearest station to wait for repairs or cleaning. The main point of this design is such that while pods aren't being used they will not block the way of other pods.

Design Proposal - Low Cost Location System

One of the problems we are facing with the small scale project is locations. I have thought of a back up solution in the case where a miniaturized GPS system that our controls team is researching may fail. We would like to have wireless triangulation for the carts to find their position on the track, however if that is not possible we would then need some way to locate the carts to determine the route it will have to travel. This is a design I thought of in the shower, and its pretty basic as the sketch shows the placement of bar codes and the process the system would take for each cart to locate itself on the track.

Starting with the hardware diagram, there will be a laser or a light source that will illuminate the bar code and then have the information read by a sensor. The bar code is designed with a piece of foil to signal the beginning of a bar code read, then the cart would take a measurement every unit of time derived from the length of time it read the high signal from the foil and the carts velocity. This is then interpreted as a binary number, converted to an integer and then that information is relayed back to the command center as a track piece location on the grid. The central computer would then calculate its fastest route and give information to the cart as it moves along the track.

Week 4 - Presentations Wave 1

This week we are presenting the progress we have made thus far in our respective subgroups. There are two weeks of presentations and the Small Scale Track team will be presenting our findings next week. I also have two design ideas that I have sketched up coming up soon.

Week 3 - Group Time

Today we did not do much. First we listened to a "lecture" about a report we will need to do soon and examples about how it should or could be done with given examples. I can't remember much of it however after that ME195 meeting we met up at the SSDC, or also known as the Spartan Superway Development Center, I think. At the SSDC Ron gave us a talk on why the presentation that Okamoto gave would have been given an F grade in the Superway project, he talked about how there was too much text and that is a distraction from what the speaker is saying. Anyways, after all that we met up with our respective teams in the project, I met up with the Project Management team and talked about what we need to do and what needs to be done. I talked to David about how the team is going and how half the people from the original team left to join Wayside power. I don't get people half the team left to do wayside power, if anything that is the easiest think to do for this project especially since one its mainly adding a rail to the track, and two its for the small scale project. So that happened, last week. Now I have a group of 8, 9 including myself, that has to get the track design done and then produced next semester, the controls and safety system developed, buy a team of three mainly, and build more carts.

So I did my best to direct a sinking ship. First I talked to each of my team leads and now I decided that we need to first decided on a final track design that we will use for the rest of the semester. Second we need to build the cart's bogey system, and the way side rail system based on that track. We still haven't decided on whether it will be the current design, or a new design where the rails are stacked on top of each other like the intermediate scale. Oh that's another think, theres three scale, small, intermediate, full; honestly I though it was just small and full, but we don't even have a full scale project. We decided for a two week time span to decided on the final track design and we will come back to it on the 30th. By then we should have a design that we can work on for the bogey, control system, and wayside rail. Other stuff will come along as we go, but I have given from the time were done witht he decision to the end of the semester to design everything around the track so it works efficiently.

After all that I also introduced my design for a location system tot he controls lead, but he said he had something else in mind so lets hope that works, If not then we'll use my design because its simple and it will work, hopefully. After the short time we had with our teams it was time for me to head over to ME147 to take vibrations.

I will have a post with my location system design up soon.

Command Center Proposal

My proposal for a command center would be to have the main control unit control the motion of the carts. This is due to the limited proceswing power of the arduino, however proximity sensors may be used for real time safety to avoid collisions with other carts and other objects that may get in the way. 

The way I would like it to work is to talk to other carts to know the positions and find their own route, however this would be difficult to program into the arduino which would need the algorithms and the data for all the track such as all roads and station information. If the track were to change then this information would have to be updated for each cart. With this current design the carts are completely docile to the command center which selects the routes and tells the cart how to move in real time. Ideally the routes would be sent to the carts and they would then drive them selves. That may be possible when we decide what kind of positioning system to use. If possible the ideal system to have would be a system that mimics GPS as LPS. However way points may be required for more accurate positioning. Hopefully we can develop a system that would not rely on assumptions on the position of the cart. 

Team Little Track - Proposal

Team Roster

Henry Xie - Team Lead - Skills: SolidWorks, C++, OpenCV, Java

• Organize the production of the small scale track for the Spartan Superway, will also assist in programming and guiding the team to follow the vision of this project

Track and Rail Team

David Sales - Track/Rail Lead - Skills: AutoCAD, Inventor, C++, Machining, Arduino

• Organize the design and production of the track\rail system

Kenny Strickland - Track Team Member - Team Treasurer

• Organization, distribution, and explanation of CAD drawings

Ali Bootwala - Track Team Member

• Responsible for helping design the track and creating deliverables list of materials

Controls Team

Nasrat Haidari - Controls Lead - Skills: Programming and Design

• Responsible for designing controls and sensors for the track system which includes cart location, and collision avoidance

Thomas Nguyen - Controls Team Member - Skills: SolidWorks, C, OpenCV, Design

• Programming control system

Kenneth Aganon  - Controls Team Member - SolidWorks, Arduino, C++, Machining

• Assisting in programming controls for carts

Cart/Pods Team

David Chen - Cart/Pods Lead - Skills: CAD Drawings and Machining

• Lead in design and production of small scale carts, and creating new carts

Bryan Ho - Cart/Pods Team Member - Skills: C++, Arduino, SolidWorks

• Assisting in design and production of small scale carts

Small Scale Power - Sub-group from Power team

Ivan Servin - Small Scale Power Lead - Creo, AutoCad, C++, Machining

• Responsible for solar and wayside power of track

Brian To - Small Scale Power Team Member - Skills: MatLab, Python, Arduino

• Design and a power management of small scale track

Allen Wai - Small Scale Power Team Member - Skills: Arduino, Welding, MatLab

• Design and production of wayside power for track

Proposal Narrative

This year there are a few things that I want to get accomplished with the small scale track. Below are a each of the sub team division and the goals I have for those teams.

For the track group, I would like them to work with the small scale solar and power team to design a modular track system which can be laid out into a grid. Each component such as turns, stations, forks, and straight aways would be design with a standard unit length such that components can be easily swapped out without modifications. This would make the track virtually infinitely expandable as long as we have materials and space. This would also make modeling the track in our controls system more easily due to the grid modular design. It would essentially be similar to a “train simulator game” where tracks are laid down in units.

For the controls group, I would like them to start doing object oriented programming for the carts. This can be easily done by programming in Java or C++ and programming then using classes or objects. Currently we have a problem with positioning but if we use a grid modular design we can estimate a carts location within each cell rather than getting its exact location. Collision avoidance could also be done by foreseeing which there the cart will be next and letting the one who's going straight, or going faster go first. This can be done by reducing the speed of the cart going second. Furthermore, as another safety precaution, the proximity sensors will sense if the carts are in close proximately with one another and will reduce the speed accordingly. The controls team will also be responsible for designing the carts circuitry and programming which most likely will use the original Arduino board, however a wifi chip may be needed instead to use a WiFi router as the communication system since for its speed and ability to communicate to multiple devices, this can be done by creating a server and client system using web based applications. Lastly if we we could create a reliable local positioning system, we could use it to represent our real life GPS positioning system so our control system would be more applicable in the real world. Not only that, based on our research for a local positioning system, if we are successful with that, we would also be rich, since that's the next big thing.

Finally for the cart and pod team, I would like them to redesign bogey slightly so it uses the same arm mechanism that is on the intermediate cart rather than the shifting wheels. The other goal for the cart team is to also produce at least three carts for this project for demonstration purposes, and if we have the resources perhaps up to 10 if we have the resources and the controls system up and running.

There is a lot of work to do for this project and with a team of 9, we have a lot on our plates. This is mostly what we plan to do, and as you can see there aren’t as many task for the track/rail and cart/pods group, this is because I plan on completing those tasks early so we can seriously develop the controls system for this project. Once completed it can then be implemented on the intermediate scale project whenever it is ready for it in the future. I would also like to note that these are the goals, however I, and everyone in the group, would like to work on different parts of the projects. This will help with integration of the different parts of the project while still maintaining groups with a focus in their sub-division.

Deliverables

By the end of this project our we would like to deliver a working model of the small scale system with multiple carts and a functioning control system. If really successful we would also be able to deliver a reliable local positioning system and a plausible control system that could be applicable on an intermediate scale system.

Sketches or Drawings

Figure 1. Initial flow chart prototype for communication between cart and command center.

Figure 2. Illustration of grid format we are planning to use for the small scale track. Not Entirely to scale, used for modularization of track components.

Schedule

Currently we are in the design phase, we will mainly be redesigning the carts to have a bogey that more closely resembles the intermediate scales bogey. At the same time we would also be planning out the track design, since we already have a station designed and fabricated from the previous year we may base our unit length on that station and build upon it to avoid spending unnecessary time on the designing just the track. Since our main goal is the control system for this project we would start planning out our software are programming early. We would generally spend part of the first semester understanding the old code when we get the source code and start programming as soon as possible. The second semester will be used to fabricate the actual model and then implementing all the systems together and fine tuning until its silky smooth.

Budget

We do not yet know the budget for this raw material since there is material that has already been bought by last years year’s small scale team however we would need money to buy several Arduinos and their WiFi boards, motors, speed controllers, and a computer to be used as a server.

Week 2 - Team Positions

9/9/2015

Today was the day we were put into our groups and have things finalized. I joined the project management group when we were told to divide into the groups our names were listed in. I went in not knowing what to expect and dived right in for the small scale project manager. Getting the position was the easy part, actually getting everyone organized is turning out to be a nightmare since everyone wants to do the same thing on the team. I had to personally ask people to work under the track team, and I'm still trying to figure out the carts team. I'm planning to have everyone work of all parts of the small scale model, however I need people in different groups who specialize in their respective sub-teams so I know what needs to get done, and know that someone has a plan to get it done.

There are many things I want to accomplish by the end of this year. First is to modularize the small scale track in a way that we can easily replace parts of the track to modify and to expand it. The second thing would be to develop a command center that is capable of controlling multiple carts so they can work efficiently, I think this is the greatest challenge ahead of us, its a good thing we have a lot of people who want to work in controls, its unfortunate there aren't enough of us. And as a second tier goal, I would like to see the intermediate scale bogey replicated in the small scale model. I feel like most of our team is going to be programming a lot of things this semester, hopefully we can get the first prototype for the control center done, that is my goal for this project. Anything done in small scale can then be transferred to the intermediate scale.

I hope the team starts talking soon since I only really have their emails, and I started a google doc. Hopefully we can get the work we need to get done to at least meet deadlines for now, then we can start moving forward.

Week 1- Sign Ups

September 2, 2015

        Today we met at the Spartan Superway workshop in a group for the first time. I was running late and when I made it to class Dr. Furman asked me for my name and when I gave it to him he asked if I was in the class, and I told him I was adding even though he said he would hold back on giving me an add code until after I was enrolled in ME120. Also he asked for my name, I went to see him every semester, except for the last, and he still doesn't really remember my name. Apologies Dr. Furman, just trying to add some humor to this first post, maybe expect more later.

        So, next to the first order of business. Today we were assigned the task of reading over the previous project reports to learn about things they did with the project and to get up to speed with it. There were many concerns I had with this project, but one thing that got to me was why the rails were designed the way they were. I read through some of the previous rail designs and I still don't seem to understand the design they were going after. So I gave a 'flash speech', as Dr. Furman calls it, about the rail system and my concerns about it, and also the fact that we have so many moving parts that it will be prone to failures.

        The next order of business was joining and signing up for groups that we would like to work in. I wanted to work on the small scale project because it had more to do with what I want to do in terms of mechatronics. Below I wrote a note expressing my interest in programming, I am hoping I will get to do that for this project later on for the small scale, and also maybe with the 12th or full scale designs. That was essentially all we did today. The end.

Note: I actually think I'm in the wrong major since I think I would prefer doing computer science or software engineering, but its too late to change now. I'm actually glad I'm doing mechatronics since I do have an interest in engineering, I get the best of both worlds, however I do wish I could go deeper into programming, even with Java, C++, OpenCV, and C I have only scratched the surface. Hopefully I can have more of a reason to expand that knowledge through this project with the opportunities it presents later.

Introduction

Henry Xie is a fifth year student at San Jose State University majoring in mechanical engineering. He is pursuing a focus in mechatronics hence going to work with the small scale team on the Spartan Superway project since it relates more to what he is interested in doing. He also has an interest in design, not just in engineering but also in aesthetics; he believed that engineering, science, and art are all related and should not be separated. He seeks to gain experience working on this large interdisciplinary project that he will be able to apply later on in his career. Henry also believes in the philosophy of 'Question Everything', at least the things you understand.