Week 1: Past Successes & Failures of Vehicle Controls Team

My name is Steven Mou and I am excited to be part of the vehicle controls team for the 2016-2017 Spartan Superway project. I am currently a mechanical engineering major at San Jose State University and intend to focus my studies into the field of mechatronics. Therefore, I look forward to being a part of the Spartan Superway because it will not only be a great way for me to expand my knowledge of mechatronics, but also allow me to utilize those skills towards something that can improve society.

Being part of the vehicle controls team, my team and I will be responsible for making sure that all the controls in the bogie function properly and cohesively. Reading the report that the 2015-2016 team had written, some of the main issues seemed to lie in the barcodes that the previous team used for positioning on the bogies. The barcode sensors seemed to be inaccurate and would also sometimes not miss some readings. As a result, the position of the bogie would not be able to be determined, which would prevent the bogie from knowing when to switch tracks. In addition, the algorithm used for the barcodes seemed difficult for someone who was not familiar with binary language to understand, let alone fix it.

Therefore, building upon the previous teams' work, my team and I hope to implement a different method to locate the positions of the bogie that would be simple yet robust. A potential method that was already discussed with the team involved placing ferrous strips on the tracks and having a sensor read magnetic pulses in order to determine positions multiple bogies simultaneously. In addition, the magnetic pulses would still read the same regardless of the direction that the bogie travels. Although it is still too early to settle on ideas without consulting the other teams beforehand, I believe we are off to a good start.