AccelCar

2016-08-17 | By Christine Soong

License: None

For this project, we are going to build an RC Car and take it to the next level! Presenting the AccelCar, a remote-controlled car that moves according to the way a user tilts the remote. The device works similar to the Mario Kart Wii. The angle tilt determines the speed and direction in which the car moves. This project creates a toy with unique controls that people of all ages can enjoy.

The remote control consists of a gyroscope/accelerometer module, which is used to find the angle at which a user is tilting the remote. Bluetooth then sends that information to the RC car, and those values are used to spin two wheels at the right speed and direction to get the car where it needs to go.

Hardware Tradeoffs

Some considerations between possible hardware and the hardware chosen for the final project were:

• DC motors, brushless motors or servos (We chose to use DC motors, because with the gearbox, the car runs at a smooth and reasonable speed with enough torque to move the entire body of the car.)
• Handwritten radio frequency protocol vs. Bluetooth communication (We chose bluetooth for the many advantages it offers.)
• Plywood vs. acrylic car body (We chose plywood over acrylic because plywood is very easy to drill holes into to customize the motors to mount onto the body.)

Software Tradeoffs

• Designing our own communication protocol vs. using the Bluetooth protocol (We decided to use prepackaged Bluetooth because speed was not as much of an issue for this project, and because we felt that the time spent sorting out bare RF would be better spent elsewhere.)
• Deciding whether or not to take advantage of the accelerometers and Bluetooth capabilities of cell phones, in order to make our device even more extensible and user friendly (We decided not to do this due to time constraints, but this is certainly a possibility in the future.)

The final product of our design almost fully met our expectations for how the car should behave. The controls are quite intuitive though some initial instruction might be needed for a new user.  Controls are also fast enough that there is no perceivable delay between a user-issued command from the remote and when the car executes the command.

http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/f2014/cs795_sw679/cs795_sw679/index.html

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