The Florida Solar Vehicle Challenge was created as an interdisciplinary project to challenge students at the University of Central Florida to create a completely autonomous solar powered vehicle. It must be designed to detect and avoid objects and obstacles causing no harm to its surrounding environment. The vehicle must also be capable of transporting one passenger with a maximum payload of 120 pounds (lbs).
This semester one Electrical/Computer Engineering team was formed to work in partnership with one Computer Science team and one Mechanical Engineering team. As the ECE team, we will create a hardware/software suite responsible for power regulation, i2c (inter-integrated circuit) communication and object avoidance using sensors. This suite will then be transferred to the Mechanical Engineering team’s vehicle chassis along with the Computer Science team’s robot vision and object detection software using a camera and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM).
The budget for this project for both the Electrical and Computer Engineering team and the Computer Science team is $1,500 collectively and another $1,500 for the Mechanical Engineering team. All three teams are sponsored and funded by Duke Energy. Each team also has a budget of $500 for any donated items.
The main system can be broken down into four major subsystems such as computer processing, powertrain and steering, obstacle detection, and power.
The computer processing subsystem uses nodes connected via a robot operating system (ROS) to process all the data collected and logically send instructions to receiving nodes to manage all functions of the vehicle. This subsystem is also interconnected to the computer science team’s objectives as all computing is done within this subsystem. Computer science will combine their robot vision nodes with the nodes created by our Electrical and Computer Engineering team to have one complete system that controls the object detection, navigation, and movement of the vehicle. The computer processing subsystem consists of a mini computer or graphical processing unit.
The powertrain and steering subsystem manages the amount of power delivered to the motor and linear actuator. The amount of power delivered to each component will control how fast the vehicle is moving and in what direction the wheels are turned when navigating away from an object that is detected. In order to manage the amount of power that needs to be delivered to each component a feedback system is needed. A controller will be set in place along with a feedback system using a hall effect sensor. The powertrain and steering subsystem consists of an electric motor, hall effect sensor, linear actuator, PID controller, and motor drivers.
The obstacle detection subsystem manages the basic movement of the vehicle. The vehicle should be able to adjust the movement including speed and direction of the vehicle as both stationary and moving objects are detected. Primary object detection and navigation for this vehicle is the responsibility of the Computer Science team. The obstacle detection subsystem built by our Electrical and Computer Engineering team is meant to be the secondary mode of object detection and navigation. It is a critical requirement that the vehicle avoid objects as safety of the entire vehicle is each teams’ number one priority. The object detection subsystem consists of sensors and a PCB.
The power subsystem collects and distributes the energy produced by the solar panels to the various hardware components in the system. This subsystem has a high degree of importance since the safe operation of the vehicle depends on how the power is distributed across the entire system to ensure all hardware components receive the necessary power to function properly. The power subsystem consists of the solar panels, batteries, charge controllers.
The system was first tested on a prototype before integration with the Mechanical Engineering Team.
