Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 | AUTONOMOUS DRIVEWAY SALT DISPENSER |
Arya Tyagi Candy Gao Mayura Kulkarni |
Koushik Udayachandran | design_document2.pdf final_paper1.pdf photo1.jpg photo2.webp photo3.webp presentation1.pdf proposal2.pdf video |
|
| **Team Members:** - Mayura Kulkarni (mayurak2) - Candy Gao (junyig4) - Arya Tyagi (aryat2) **Problem** Freezing rain and extremely low temperatures during the winter season cause slippery driveways and sidewalks which make it difficult for people to walk and drive. Current methods of dispensing salt in these areas are done manually and are not very efficient. This is because salt is thrown randomly across these areas which results in wastage of salt and sometimes less salt in very icy areas. Also, these methods have safety risks as ice covering these areas makes it harder for people to walk to dispense the salt. It also increases the burden on homeowners to salt their driveways manually. **Solution** To solve this issue, we want to create a fully autonomous salt dispenser. Our solution would be a self-driving car that would dispense salt evenly across driveways and sidewalks. This would solve the issue of having slippery ice on the sidewalk/driveway when trying to leave your house. Also, allowing the car to only dispense salt on driveways and sidewalks will help to reduce the amount of salt that is wasted from randomly dispensing salt manually. The dispenser will consist of two main components. The first component is the autonomous steering of the car which will prevent the car from driving out of bounds, such as on the grass or outside of the driveway. Also, the second component is the dispensing of the salt using motors to allow the salt to be spread evenly across the surface. **Solution Components** Our Solution is made up of 2 components. 1. The Autonomous driving 2. Salt Dispensing **Subsystem 1: Autonomous Boundary Detection** For the first part of the project, we are trying to create autonomous driving for the car. To ensure that the car stays on the driveway, the car will need to be able to detect that the edge of the driveway has been reached and turn around. The way we are planning on doing this is by using a multitude of sensors to correctly analyze if the car has reached the edge of the driveway. This will include the detection of a color difference in where the robot is now versus what is in front of the robot, and we were going to use the difference in acoustic properties of grass and pavement to tell them apart using ultrasonic sensors. After testing the sensors we will create a threshold for what “reaching the end of the driveway” entails. We will also need to determine when the end of the driveway (the part that attaches to the sidewalk) has been reached and stop the car from moving further. We are handling this in a different way than we are handling the driveway/grass boundary because there is no guaranteed terrain change for the edge of the driveway which connects to the sidewalk. We are planning to use sensors (infrared or ultrasonic) to mark a boundary line for the car. The sensors will be attached to a wireless module and once it has detected that an object (the car) has crossed the set boundary, it will send a signal to the microcontroller and stop the car. **Components:** - Infrared Sensor - Color Sensor - Ultrasonic Sensor/ Air Transducer? - Wireless module **Subsystem 2: Salt dispenser and motion** For the second part of the project, we are going to create a salt dispenser. The salt dispenser will have a similar mechanism to current salt spreader products on the market. Specifically, the dispenser will consist of a container to hold the salt. At the bottom of the container, there will be a small hole in which the salt will fall through which will be initially closed. By pressing a ‘Start,’ button on the PCB, the hole will open which will allow the salt to fall and start the motors of the car. A rotating disk with multiple blades will be placed below the container to allow the falling salt to be projected out of the disk to the ground. The rotation speed of the disk will be controlled by the speed of the car. The front two wheels of the car will each have one motor in order to control the direction and motion of the car. The motors must also have sufficient power to move the car with the weight of the salt. The motors will be controlled using a microcontroller. **Components:** - Microcontroller - Motor Control Module: - Power supply - Start button on PCB for opening the hole at the bottom of the container - Body of the Car - 2 motors to control the front two wheels of the car - 4x wheels - Disk for salt dispensing - Container to hold salt **Criterion For Success** - The car will be able to open the hole within the salt container and start the motors once the ‘Start,’ button has been pressed. - The car will be able to travel across the driveway without crossing onto the grass - The car will dispense salt evenly onto the driveway - The car will stop and shut off once it reaches the end of the driveway |
|||||