Sensor Driven Car

Inspiration

For our team's first hackathon project, we decided on a concept that would challenge us while remaining achievable. Of the many parts available in the kit, we chose a combination which could be used to direct a remote controlled vehicle in unconventional ways. This was an opportunity to make use of the technical skills learned in class in a practical application.

What it does

The car is powered by 4AA, 1 9v batteries, and dual electric DC motors using a pulse modulated input mediated by an L298N dual full bridge driver integrated circuit. An Arduino micro-controller mounted on the chassis provides the necessary inputs to the IC that allow for variable speeds, independent wheel operation, and turning by supplying different levels of power to different wheels. The Arduino is connected to a receiver that takes a customized RF signal from the controlling system and analyses it to produced the desired results of motion.The controls are operated by two independent sensors: a distance sensor for steering, and a pressure sensor for speed. The distance sensor is to be used with hand signals to determine the direction the car will travel, while the pressure sensor uses force applied to dictate the magnitude of the velocity. After receiving the data from the sensors the data is immediately sent to the receiver on the vehicle to facilitate real time controls.

How we built it

We split up into two teams, one that worked to set up the motor control system and one that set up the sensing and signal transmission. Upon completion of these two parts, we combined them and began the debugging process.

Challenges we ran into

The implementation of the RF transceiver which enables the car's wireless connectivity was a major challenge when we tried to transfer data while reading sensor input. We also encountered some issues when interfacing the arduino with the DC motors, since we could not implement the full functionality of our IC given our current components.