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Solar Panel/Solar Charge Regulator | Solar charge regulation can be somewhat complicated, typically more complicated than a standard switching regulator if optimal power draw is desired, so this project can be isolated into it’s own board Solar panels that are big enough to actually power the rover/charge the battery are likely too big for this competition - at the very least, it’ll make meeting the size and weight restrictions much more difficult. Therefore, it is probably better to do something of a much smaller scale. For example, medium power generation for non-critical systems (i.e. the status display board, weather data, maybe even the control sensors and obstacle detection system as well) In any case, it is important to determine what the solar power will be used for and where it will go in order to determine the power requirements of the board/solar panel, and then go from there
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PDB + BMS Rev. 4 | Some improvements to the power distribution board and BMS The 48V-24V multiphase buck should be moved to this board so all power distribution is on one board Make necessary revisions & improvements on previous revisions of PDB + BMS and multiphase buck Look into active cell balancing Power monitoring - it would be beneficial to have current sensing in addition to the voltage sensing for all the power rails to measure how much power is being used across the rover
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Radar/Lidar/Ultrasonic Obstacle Detection System | Look into how ultrasonic sensors were used in the past for obstacle detection Look into selecting radar/lidar sensors for better obstacle detection - see research pages for pros and cons of each technology Alert systems to communicate if a collision is likely going to occur
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Backplane Board | Allow intercommunication between boards, as well as easily swap in/out PCBs for modules (i.e. swap in science board during science mission, swap in arm board for other missions (if arm board is implemented)) May seem deceptively easy but this board would require a lot of work to cooperate with the designers for all the other boards to make sure matching harnesses and connections are used, as well as making sure everything fits and the connections line up correctly (help from mechanical team may be beneficial here) This board could also take on power distribution and power monitoring/management - if this is the case, PDB would be changed to be more of a power regulation board rather than a power distribution board, and the backplane would do the power distribution (PDB is already mostly just power regulation, so this wouldn’t be a huge change)
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Data Collection & Control Board | Combines the weather board and control board into one, since both of these are mainly just collecting and transmitting data The control board’s sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer, etc.) would likely provide valuable data to the firmware and software teams, especially for the autonomous driving mission, so cooperating with them to see how valuable and how accurate the data would be is key Most of the weather board’s data probably won’t be useful for completing any of the missions, so it would be good to decide on what to do with the data (i.e. transmit it over comms, display it, etc.)
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Status Display Board | This could be an interesting upgrade to the LED matrix, though care should be taken to avoid violating the rules and requirements of the LED matrix - if there’s too much conflict, it may be better to keep the status display and LED matrix separate For context, LED matrix is solely to display LEDs in a specific color to display the status of the robot (OK, fault, tele-operated)
A lot of freedom with what information to display as well as how to display it, so a lot of creativity can be employed here. Some suggestions are the solar power, overall rover power, battery status/state of charge, weather and control data This board could also include the audio transmission and reception with the remote speaker (maybe even the air horn too)
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Other Ideas Requiring Further Development | The rest of the ideas fall into this category. These ideas require more development and thought before moving forward with them for various reasons. They may be underdeveloped, too difficult or unfeasible for this team/the rover, or conflict with certain parts of the rover. Submodules/sub robots: Would require a lot of work from multiple subteams in order to achieve this, not to mention a lot of time and funding, and is prone to a lot of mistakes since it’s something unlike anything the team has done before. Not impossible, but as it stands the idea is too costly to move forward with Support for a docking drone: This is a really good idea, but before this can be worked on, the drone itself would need to be selected - whether it’ll be an off the shelf product or an in house design, as well as what exactly the drone’s purpose will be. If the drone mission is ever taken on, this idea should be revisited Rock sample retrieval: Very similar to what the science module does, perhaps it could be considered as an addition to the science module instead of a separate project 360 camera/VR setup: May conflict with the gimbal camera setup already in place. It would probably be too difficult to have both systems side by side due to the limited bandwidth of the comms system, but the idea could still contribute to an alternative gimbal design Magnetic array: This could be a really interesting project, but there needs to be research first on what this looks like and how it would be implemented. Additionally, a variable magnetic field could cause issues with the circuits on the rover, so this would need to be looked into before it’s developed and put on the rover
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