Team members:
- Raymond Chen
- Zhuo Jing
- Brian Pentz
- Kjell Peterson
- Steven Pham
Our project is to design a vehicle controlled remotely by a handheld touch-screen computer. The touch-screen will display a map of an area and the user will be able to draw a path on it that the vehicle will attempt to follow. If the vehicle encounters any permanent obstacles that it cannot pass along the way, it will manuever around the obstacle and update the map on the touch-screen to include the new obstacle. In addition, the touch-screen computer will display the current position of the vehicle on the path, distance traveled, distance remaining, and estimated time of arrival. The position of the vehicle will be determined by measuring the distance between two beacons at the corners of the map and the vehicle.
The touch-screen computer will be designed on a Hewlett-Packard iPaq pocket PC. It has a handheld version of windows on it, which will allow us to build a GUI in C++. The iPaq uses Bluetooth to communicate wirelessly. Bluetooth is range-limited to 30ft, but uses very little power compared to longer range wireless technologies.
The vehicle will be battery operated, so we will aim to make its power consumption as low as possible. We will need to mount radar sensors on all sides of the vehicle to give it a 360-degree sense of nearby obstacles. An onboard FPGA will control vehicle to iPaq communications, obstacle avoidance, and regional positioning.