Design Processes

Design Process
Defined the problem- Create an Integrated Autonomous Vehicle (IAV).
Brainstormed ideas for IAV.
Designed concepts for the IAV and chose one.
Building Process
After Modeling the IAV in CAD, we used a laser cutter to cut the necessary pieces
for our IAV.
We ordered the pieces such as: Motor and encoder kit, screws, nuts, spacers,
leveler, Arduino Protoshield, a Boost Converter, a line follower array, and an
Adafruit motor shield with headers included.
We built a prototype and made major decisions for our IAV:
We decided to use a LoPo battery for our IAV, and switched from from a
PowerCell to a LiPower- Boost Converter because the amount of the current
would not suffice the requirements needed by the IAV. We also decided where we
would place the Arduino and battery on our IAV.
We will test prototype to get the desired results for the final design. (Edit) We
successfully tested the prototype and we found some issues that were fixed.
We decided that we werent going to use the final robot we had planned to use,
instead we built additional parts to add to one of our robots that was already built.
These parts include: Two arcs, a blocker plate, a blocker, 3 chips to hold up the
blocker, and a bottom. All these parts add up to a similar design of the final robot
we were going to use.
Attempted to add a Bluetooth module onto our vehicle which didnt work with
our devices.
After redesigning the robot we ran into issues about size so we shortened some
parts, changed the way they would go onto the robot when the robot was being
built.
We discovered that the weight of this impacted the speed, the way it turned, and
timing of the brush motor.
After more brainstorming we decided to rid of everything else due to weight
issues that we would only use the arcs that have been modified for this.

Coding Process

We downloaded libraries for the line follower, and which we ran on our prototype.
With this library we learned how to get it to blink so we can attach it to our
prototype. We also did the same with a practice motor to see how it runs and later
on we used our own motors on our prototype and ran them.

We were able to run the line follower using our own code with success. We also
used the library for the motor to run it, but we ran into some difficulties in when
we were trying to merge both codes together.
After testing the robot with our first code we had finished, we found some issues
in the way the robot made turns, it over turned, and it had sensitivity issues.
We added an encoder to our vehicle, and a Hall effects sensor.
New code issues emerged, the power wouldnt work, the Bluetooth didnt work,
sensors wouldnt work, and the magnets for the encoder were dragging on the
floor. We got to work right away to fix these issues. The left the motor tended to
lag on the straightaway, so we increased the power to make it go straight ahead.
We faced over correcting issues when testing the final robot.
Slowed down robot to make timing less critical.
We were having problems with port 3, it kept giving us erroneous counts. We are
not sure what else might be wrong with the port or what it is the issue.
One of the motors are presenting issues, and is not turning the way it is intended
to.