Engineering Projects/HoverCraft/Howard Community College/Fall2012/p2-501 RAJK

Problem Statement
Construct a hovercraft that hovers 12 inches and moves forwards and backwards autonomously with arduino.

Joseph

Adam

Summary


As we went into week 0 and Week 1 the team decided to improve on the hover craft done by the last team. We reconstructed the same craft the last team had used. When then divided into two teams, two members work on arduino and the other two improve the craft during week 2 and beginning of week 3.

Overall, we believe as a group that we accomplished a lot with this project. Unknowingly, we were stepping into a project that would be a disaster with problems. Each problem did come with a solution and we did work together to come up with the best solutions possible. During week 0 and week 1, we worked together to improve the hovercraft as far as design, movement, durability, and weight is concerned. We then divided into two groups to improve the hovercraft and study programming for arduino. However, we had a team mate the was not cooperating with us so the resonsibility was increased among Joseph, Rivesh, and Adam. Joseph continued to work on the arudino programming and create ways to have the hover craft move while Rivesh helped in arudino programming and the design process of the hover craft with Adam. Looking at different solutions became very difficult as we began to make the hovercraft work. It seemed as if the supplies were there but to have the hovercraft move, the solutions weren't. The idea of adding fans to have the hovercraft move and operate off of the arduino seemed like a great idea. We tried to have the hovercraft move with the fan but it did not work. The fan blew wind and the hovercraft would not move. We then decided to have the fan blow against something, like a piece of wood to have some type of movement. However, that did not work either. We then added fans to the bottom of the hovercraft thinking that could improve the movement. That idea did not work either. So overall, most decisions that were made resulted in a issue that could not be resolved.

Story


The team was fist assigned to work on the robot car but after discussing it over we decided to change to the hover craft. The team was more interested in how the hover craft works and two of the team members had already worked on the hovercraft before giving the team more experience in this project.We decide to go off of the design from the team before-the Frisbee with the motor on the bottom off it. We wanted to improve the fan so that it can lift the Frisbee about 12 inches off the ground. Then be able to configure the wiring with Arduino to tell the craft's fan to turn left or right. During week 1 the four of the team members split in to twos, two to work on Arduino and two to work on improving the hover craft. The problems that occurred while improving the craft was the rope glued to the Frisbee. It was causing more friction and weighed the Frisbee down. The Frisbee in it's current state could levitate only few centimeters of the ground no in it's current state like in the example video below.At the beginning of week 2 the team started slowing getting to the place we wanted. The team members improving the craft took of the rope and reattached a new skirt to the craft. The rope became too much for the craft to handle.The hovercraft could float a little higher but now needed a new way of powering the craft. The two of the members that worked on the arduino had a difficult time finding examples of what the program would look like and how we would attach to the craft. If the arduino provided more weight for the craft it could cause the hovercraft problems when it starts to float. In the start of week 3 we are trying to improve everything to work to our specific specification in order to test it the final week. At the end of week 3 we finished the arduino programing but had no way of placing the Arduino on the craft.



Material List
List of Materials

1. Frisbee

2. Fan

3. 3 nine volt batteries


 * 2. The team needs after us needs to purchase a battery that can actually power hovercraft without draining so fast. That is the primary thing that is required. We re-created the bottom of the hovercraft to have it operate smoothly so the necessities that are required to have the hovercraft operate are all there, as far as the design process is concerned. Other groups will have to just add to the arduino program already created to have the thing operate. Other than that, nothing else needs to be purchase to have the hovercraft work.

Software List
Arduino 1.0 program

Time
Total hours the team put together was 50 hours, Adam, Joseph, and Rivesh

Tutorials
The second program who be a better example to make the craft move forward. The program was based upon the 2012 robot car JHK and examples form this link on youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJFW4DaNZQ



Next Steps
The next team that works on this project should take in consideration the process of how they will connect the Arduino to the hover craft to cause it to move forward and possibly adding an anchor and slanted directional motors.