Sensing Team

The Sensing team keeps the driver well-informed of the current state of the vehicle, and to control the vehicle based on driver input.

Current Plans and Implementation Direction

We intend to do this by implementing a CAN network that makes it easy for us to communicate across the vehicle, and will minimize the amount of long wiring run, which will make our system more robust. We will then utilize this network to control the motor driver, and bring all of our sensor inputs, distributed across the vehicle, to a central node controlling display. We also plan to give the driver as intuitive an experience as possible, by making the information output and control input simple and easy to understand. We plan to use LED's to display information such as speed, battery status, and emergency signals and use an LCD screen to show longer messages. We want to make some of our own sensors, to get a sense of how these are done. The first sensor we will build is a hall effect wheel speed sensor. Other sensors we intend to implement will indicate voltage, current, temperature, and state of charge.

Specifics So Far

We have decided to use a CAN network and Atmel AVR Microcontrollers as the framework for our system. We are now looking at specific sensors in more detail as well as beginning to plan and implement a CAN network. Our goal is to build a system-wide network within our vehicles so any device built by any team can communicate and send warnings to other devices. This could mean a speed sensor and readout that can communicate directly with our motor controller or that our Battery Management System will be able to warn the motor controller when pack voltage or charge drops too low. Luckily, the Atmel AVR's come with built-in CAN bus support.