Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
57 Water Aliasing
 Atreyee Roy
Siddharth Sharma
 Luke Wendt design_document0.pdf
design_document0.pdf
design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
photo0.jpg
presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
Members:

Atreyee Roy - aroy10
Siddharth Sharma - srsharm2

Idea:

During the pitching session, our TA Luke Wendt talked about the Water Aliasing Project that we immediately took an interest in. The basic idea behind this project is to create an illusion by playing around with the frequency of water and the frequency of a strobe light. Even though many people have performed this experiment already, we plan to add some additional features to our design so it is more interactive for the user and does more than simply levitate or move up or down.

Hardware Description:

We will need to create the circuit for the strobe light that we plan to have on the side panels of our system so it can illuminate multiple columns of water. We will design a panel of LEDs that will be on for short bursts of time to have very sharp droplets visible. Ideally we plan to design this strobe light circuit with comparators, transistors (>10 A), and regulators, along with other generic components that we may need as we figure out the circuit. These will be mainly needed to create the short bursts of light (really narrow input signals). We plan to generate and control the frequency of our strobe light with a signal generator, so it is easy to change or maintain the frequency we need for any particular mode (up, down, still).

For the water, we plan to create 4 columns, each pipe from a water pump to recycle the water used, to be run at independent frequencies with small speakers. We looked into Piezoelectric benders (coin type speakers) that are tiny and their frequencies and start and stop times can be controlled with extreme precision. They also happen to be cheaper than other options.

Software Description:

We plan to integrate user interfacing in this project. What we envisioned is a simple app that has three buttons arranged one below the other, in 4 columns- one for each column of water. Through this app, we can control the up and down, or still, motion of each column of water independently. Then, simultaneously each column can have a different movement, based on the user’s wish. We plan to transmit a bluetooth signal with our app, which will be received by our controller to alter the frequencies of the speakers as required. This will be achieved by our code for the controller design.

We expect that once we can figure out how to transmit even one of these commands to the controller, the rest will be a matter of scaling and we can have the user play with the controls on the app to make the water flow as desired.

Important concerns regarding safety:

Since this is a water based project, we plan to do it on a small scale so it is easy to work on and portable eventually. We may encase the entire system in a glass box, with the strobe lights on the sides. We think this will also give it an aesthetic value, while being contained and safe, minimising spillage.

Background:

Our team consists of an Electrical Engineer and a Computer Engineer, with background in microelectronic circuit design, control systems, artificial intelligence, machine learning, along with a strong coding background.

Remotely Controlled Self-balancing Mini Bike

Will Chen, Eric Tang, Jiaming Xu

Featured Project

# Remotely Controlled Self-balancing Mini Bike

Team Members:

- Will Chen hongyuc5

- Jiaming Xu jx30

- Eric Tang leweit2

# Problem

Bike Share and scooter share have become more popular all over the world these years. This mode of travel is gradually gaining recognition and support. Champaign also has a company that provides this service called Veo. Short-distance traveling with shared bikes between school buildings and bus stops is convenient. However, since they will be randomly parked around the entire city when we need to use them, we often need to look for where the bike is parked and walk to the bike's location. Some of the potential solutions are not ideal, for example: collecting and redistributing all of the bikes once in a while is going to be costly and inefficient; using enough bikes to saturate the region is also very cost inefficient.

# Solution

We think the best way to solve the above problem is to create a self-balancing and moving bike, which users can call bikes to self-drive to their location. To make this solution possible we first need to design a bike that can self-balance. After that, we will add a remote control feature to control the bike movement. Considering the possibilities for demonstration are complicated for a real bike, we will design a scaled-down mini bicycle to apply our self-balancing and remote control functions.

# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1: Self-balancing part

The self-balancing subsystem is the most important component of this project: it will use one reaction wheel with a Brushless DC motor to balance the bike based on reading from the accelerometer.

MPU-6050 Accelerometer gyroscope sensor: it will measure the velocity, acceleration, orientation, and displacement of the object it attaches to, and, with this information, we could implement the corresponding control algorithm on the reaction wheel to balance the bike.

Brushless DC motor: it will be used to rotate the reaction wheel. BLDC motors tend to have better efficiency and speed control than other motors.

Reaction wheel: we will design the reaction wheel by ourselves in Solidworks, and ask the ECE machine shop to help us machine the metal part.

Battery: it will be used to power the BLDC motor for the reaction wheel, the stepper motor for steering, and another BLDC motor for movement. We are considering using an 11.1 Volt LiPo battery.

Processor: we will use STM32F103C8T6 as the brain for this project to complete the application of control algorithms and the coordination between various subsystems.

## Subsystem 2: Bike movement, steering, and remote control

This subsystem will accomplish bike movement and steering with remote control.

Servo motor for movement: it will be used to rotate one of the wheels to achieve bike movement. Servo motors tend to have better efficiency and speed control than other motors.

Stepper motor for steering: in general, stepper motors have better precision and provide higher torque at low speeds than other motors, which makes them perfect for steering the handlebar.

ESP32 2.4GHz Dual-Core WiFi Bluetooth Processor: it has both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity so it could be used for receiving messages from remote controllers such as Xbox controllers or mobile phones.

## Subsystem 3: Bike structure design

We plan to design the bike frame structure with Solidworks and have it printed out with a 3D printer. At least one of our team members has previous experience in Solidworks and 3D printing, and we have access to a 3D printer.

3D Printed parts: we plan to use PETG material to print all the bike structure parts. PETG is known to be stronger, more durable, and more heat resistant than PLA.

PCB: The PCB will contain several parts mentioned above such as ESP32, MPU6050, STM32, motor driver chips, and other electronic components

## Bonus Subsystem4: Collision check and obstacle avoidance

To detect the obstacles, we are considering using ultrasonic sensors HC-SR04

or cameras such as the OV7725 Camera function with stm32 with an obstacle detection algorithm. Based on the messages received from these sensors, the bicycle could turn left or right to avoid.

# Criterion For Success

The bike could be self-balanced.

The bike could recover from small external disturbances and maintain self-balancing.

The bike movement and steering could be remotely controlled by the user.

Project Videos