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Week 1 (Aug. 29, 2018): Group Assignments and Introduction


For the first official week of Spartan Superway, Dr. Furman introduced the mission and goals of the team. Past semesters have already provided the foundation of the project, so the main goal is to continue developing a monorail system suspended above ground, powered by solar panels. After a brief introduction, we were subsequently divided into our chosen sub-teams. I was assigned to the Small-Scale Controls Team, along with my partner, David Mapapa. However, the entire Small-Scale Team (Controls, Track, and Bogie) agreed to collaborate and communicate with each other to build a fully functional and effective small-scale model, comprising of the pod car and track.

(Small Scale Vehicle Controls Team - Final Presentation - ME195B)

Afterwards, Dr. Furman gave the Small-Scale Team a brief rundown of past semesters’ accomplishments, as well as other objectives he was hoping we could achieve, as the new Small-Scale Team. For the small-scale controls, he envisioned implementing several features: a differential drive system to prevent over-exertion of the servo motor steering the wheels when making a turn, which would lead to eventual striping of the gears within the motor; an inductive charging system to wirelessly charge the pod car at each station; and further development of the Android application that utilizes a Raspberry Pi and runs on Python to allow user interface with the pod cars. Research would have to be conducted to determine how to incorporate these features into the small-scale model, and communication with the other small-scale teams would be paramount to our success.

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