ME 195A - Spartan Superway

Today at Spartan Superway, we made more progress in terms of understanding what we need to do and the components that we are gonna use for the project. We talked with prof. Furman about our idea for the position tracking of the bogie using optical encoders magnetic strips. He suggested us to use a mechanical switch, hall effect sensors or RFID tags so that we can get some kind of a signal to keep track of the bogie. The wayside team explained to us how they are gonna integrate the ultra capacitors to the system with all the voltage and current that is going to be available for the motors and the electronics. For the switching mechanism, we talked to both the guide-way team and the bogie team to get their input on how to control the linear actuator for it. The guide-way team will give third rail which is 45 degrees inclined to the wheel and the bogie team will need 6 linear actuators for the switching on both the slave and master bogie.