Engineering Projects/HoverCraft/Howard Community College/Fall2011/501 Glorious

Problem Statement
There are many working models of Hovercrafts, some large and some small. However, the large ones are often piloted by a person, and the smaller ones are controlled with a remote controller. To the best of our knowledge, there are not many models that utilize an autopilot system and sensors that can avoid people yet travel down a crowded school corridor.

Team Members
Here is a list of the team members working on this project. The links to their individual project pages are also given:
 * James Morgan
 * Parlette
 * Blomme

Summary
Our team started out by making a basic design for the hover craft. We decided that we wanted the base to be a rectangular piece of Styrofoam. We wanted to have two fans blowing downward, one in the far back and one in the middle, and two fans blowing behind the hovercraft. This was so that the weight of the back two fans would not push the back of the hovercraft low to the ground since we have a fan right there blowing it up. We decided to keep the plastic wrap on the the piece of Styrofoam as our skirt. And it works very well. We cut two holes in the Styrofoam and plastic wrap where the two fans are blowing down so that the skirt can be inflated. Next, we needed to figure out a way to remotely control our hovercraft. We wanted some way to be able to remotely turn off just the left fan, turn off just the right fan, have both on, or have both off. We were given ATI remotes. These ATI remotes are meant to be used to watch TV on a computer, and we were to try to figure out how to use them to remotely control a hovercraft. After several hours of effort, we were unable to figure out how to use the remote to remotely turn on or off our fans. We tried hooking it up to an Arduino, but we couldn't get it. We also tried to just use wires straight from the receiver and put them on a bread board to make an LED light up, but that didn't work. In the end, when we finally got our remote controlled cars in, we changed our focus toward using the remote and receiver from one of the cars to turn the motors of our fans on and off. We are still in the process of hooking up the receiver to the motors on our hovercraft.

Story
There are three overall aspects to complete this project: 1. Building a working design of a Hover Craft; 2. Using a remote control system to control the Hover Craft; and 3. Developing and using an Autopilot system to allow the craft to avoid people while traveling through a crowded hallway. To build a working design of a Hover Craft, our team used prior knowledge of Hover Craft design, and also drew on the designs of previous teams. We created a design out of a Styrofoam sheet and gathered fans and turbines to propel and lift the craft. After roughly attaching these, we hooked the fans up to a power source to see if they worked. They worked quite well and provided enough lift to allow our craft to hover on a table surface.

The next step was finding a way of remotely controlling the Hover Craft. We searched the back rooms for any controllers remaining from previous projects, but unfortunately we didn't find a remote like the kind we were looking for. We did find an ATI remote, and attempted to connect the receiver to an Arduino. However, this provided some trouble, as no one in our team had much experience with Arduinos. Meanwhile, we requested some remote controlled cars, as we hoped to use the receiver and transmitter from the cars for our Hover Craft. We continued with this for another week, learning how to use an Arduino, and trying to splice the ATI Remote with the Arduino. The remote controlled cars finally arrived, but we have had no time to work with the receivers and transmitters as of yet.

Because the second step took so long to work through, and was not even completed at the end, there has been no time for working out an autopilot system. Once control is established for the Hover Craft with a remote controller, the next priority is to develop a method of autopilot control. The only lead our team has at this point is to use a Lego Mindstorm sensor of some kind and connect it to an Arduino. The next steps to take at this point are finalize control via remote controllers, and then set up an autopilot system.

Decision List
1. Decide what the base of the hover craft is going to be made out of.

2. Decide how many fans we wanted to use and how to arrange them. And if we decide on one fan in the back, what the ruder will be like.

3. Decide on what to use for the skirt.

4. Decide on what to use for our remote control device.

Material List
-rectangle of Styrofoam for our base

-the plastic that came wrapped around the piece of Styrofoam to use as our skirt.

-4 fans

-epoxy glue to glue down the fans

-wire, to attach the motors from the fans to power sources

-remote controlled car controller and receiver

Software List
- ATI remote software, found here http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/remotewonder2-xp.aspx

-Arduino software

Time
We spent about an hour and fifteen minutes each class working on this, and we spent an average of about one hour and a half each week outside of class individually. So over four weeks, each person should have spent about 11 hours of work on the project.

Tutorials
A Hover Craft is a common enough idea that many people probably know the basic method of constructing one. However, we've found that it's slightly more difficult to construct one than we thought. However, we will walk through our procedure so that those who wish to continue with this project may learn from us.

To start with, we planned our designs, and decided on a simple, yet capable design. We took a sheet of Styrofoam about an inch thick and left the plastic wrap it was packed in on the sheet. We then used an Exacto knife to cut two holes for the lift turbines, and attached those turbines with epoxy. We attached alligator clip wires to the turbines and hooked it up to a power source to see if the turbines worked. We set it up correctly, and the turbines provided enough lift to allow the sheet of Styrofoam to hover across the tabletop.

Then we went looking for remote controllers, but only found ATI remotes which are used to watch TV on a computer. We began taking apart the receiver box to gain access to the insides. Our goal was to find a way to splice the ATI remote receiver box to an Arduino, and use the Arduino software found on the computers to establish a connection and control the Hover Craft. After we could not get that working, we tried to see if we could just have wires from the receiver be directly attached to an LED to see if we could turn the LED on and off using the remote. But we were not able to achieve that either. So we would recommend to get a remote and receiver from a remote controlled car and use the wires from the receiver to power our fans. And set it up to be able to turn both fans individually on and off.

Next Steps
We have made good progress on this project, however there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to accomplish the initial problem statement. We were able to build our design of a Hover Craft, and have found that, when supplied with power, will hover on a surface. However, control still needs to be established in some form or another. After one is able to control the craft with a remote, an autopilot system should be set up for the craft so it can navigate without needing to be physically controlled.

This is a promising project, and one that could be a lot of fun. However, there was a lot to do in little time, and we would have liked to have gotten further with this interesting project.