The objective of this undergraduate student project was to design a laser remotecontrolled utility cart. The intent was to design and build the cart from discrete electronic components and mechanical parts utilizing a multitude of engineering disciplines the Engineering Technology program offered at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The cart was required to perform the following motions; going forward, going in reverse, turning right, turning left and stopping. These motions were remote-controlled by laser light aimed at five different photoresistors embedded in the rear section of the cart. Completion of a project required: 1. Designing and constructing a laser controlled electronic circuit to operate the cart. 2. Designing and constructing a mechanical frame, assembling a drive mechanism to utilize an electrical DC motor to move the cart and a stepper motor to steer it. The electronic controlling circuit was designed and constructed on a prototype board so that students could modify or trouble shoot any malfunction section easily. The control circuit consisted of a laser switching circuit, clock generator, pulse sequencing circuit and relays to deliver high current to the DC and stepper motors. The cart was assembled out of pine and blast wood to keep the weight down to a minimum. The cart's rear axle was coupled to the shaft of a DC motor with high torque that could move the cart forward and backward. Steering was done by a stepper motor in order to have better control during turning.
This paper describes the details of an undergraduate design project in our Design Technology course and the experience gain by the student involved. The intent of the course is to expose students to real world design projects. Students are expected to be creative and innovative in their design projects and utilize a multitude of engineering disciplines that Engineering Technology Program offers at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The objective of this project was to use a 68HC12 Motorola microcontroller to control a three-axis motion of a milling machine. This micro-controller was chosen because it has multiple inputs/outputs, built in 8-bit analog to digital converter and timer, pulse width modulator, 16 bit I/O bus, and on board flash memory. In this project, student designed an interfaced circuit to micro-controller and wrote a program in assembly language to control the motion of each stepper motor that is responsible for each axial.
This paper describes the details of an undergraduate design project in our Design Technology course and the experience gain by the student involved. The intent of the course is to expose students to real world design projects. Students are expected to be creative and innovative in their design projects and utilize a multitude of engineering disciplines that Engineering Technology Program offers at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The selection of the automatic speed adjustment of windshield wiper was intended to incorporate and demonstrate the application of feedback control and photooptics. In this project, the student had to design an automated speed controller for a windshield wiper motor of a vehicle based on the amount of rainfall. The speed of rainfall in this project was determined by the amount of rain collected in semi-funnel shaped mount under-hoot with flat side against the windshield directly. An optic -electronic system was designed which uses flash converter to set the desire motor speed setting of the wiper according to the rainfall.
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