IGVC - Senior Project

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competitionis held every year in Michigan. Teams work to build a robot that will autonomously navigate an obstacle course built on soccer fields. My team worked on building our robot, Terminus, but unfortunately were unable to go to competition. Here are a few articles about the project, particularly the parts I was was involved in. 

If you want to learn more than I have here, read some of Ben's articles on the robot or read our team's final report.

Optical Quadrature Encoder for IGVC

An optical encoder design was drawn up in order to allow for a feedback signal of the drive wheel’s rotation speed. Three design iterations were drafted in order to reach the final design. All three iterations made use of two electrical switches placed slightly apart from each other in such a way that as the wheel rotates, the switches are interrupted. The frequency of the interruption corresponds to an angular velocity of the wheel. The use of two stitches allows for direction to be measured using quadrature. In a certain direction, their signal will pulse in a certain order.

IGVC Robot

Here is the robot that my team designed for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. When I first started with the project, I already had the maximum number of credits on my plate, so the team leader brought me on in the position of the "child of five." My job was to come to meetings of the entire team and make suggestions about what might be more complicated than it needed to be or suggest fixes that were simple. 

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