Week 9 (Oct. 24, 2018): Presentation #2 (Primary & Alternative Design Concepts) Reflection & Eliminating GPS as a Possibility
Earlier this week, to prepare for our presentation on October 24, I looked into different GPS modules. Unfortunately, I concluded that it was not possible to implement one. Recently, I learned in my ME 190 class (Mechatronics System Design) that GPS is not very accurate, as it does not have a fine resolution. Within a 10-meter radius, the satellite cannot distinguish whether the object is at the 1-meter mark or if it’s at the 9-meter mark; in other words, the object that the GPS is attached to will just be a big dot on the map. To illustrate my point, a map is shown below. The top image depicts the position of the GPS user represented by a large dot. That dot covers 10-meters, as the bottom image shows smallest measurement that that can be achieved by zooming in is 10-meters. After travelling nine-meters in one direction, the GPS has not updated the location of the dot. Additionally, the object would have to be travelling faster than 1 m/s; we aimed to have the podcar travel at around