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Week 2 (Sept. 5, 2018): Preliminary Project Proposal


Today, we presented our preliminary project proposal ideas via quick 5-minute “Lightning Talks”.
The Small-Scale Controls Team presented our three proposed ideas: 
  1. A differential drive system that would drive the wheels that move along the outer rail faster than the inner wheels when making a turn. This would 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.
  2. An inductive charging system to wirelessly charge the pod car at each station. 
  3. Further implementation of the Android application that utilizes a Raspberry Pi and runs on Python to allow user interface with the pod cars, i.e. to allow the user to pick which station to travel to and which pod car to use.
Another detail that was thought of post-presentations was refabricating the small-scale podcar to accommodate the new features. Injection molding the pod car, along with the Track team’s brackets (in separate quotes, but most likely all at the same time), as early as possible to prevent procrastination and failure to deliver parts. 

Please refer to our initial project proposal, embedded below. 


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