Update: Assignment 9/21/15

Since the 2nd blog post, I became part of the inter university correspondent team. We are planning on establishing connection with the team that worked on the small scale model over the summer from Korea. Furthermore, I attended the dinner on Friday, 9/18/15, where the J Pod CEO, Bill James, came to offer some advice about the project. He showed us some of the software that models what the rails would look like in an actual city. Furthermore, he also had other programs that showed items such as wait time, time of arrival, etc. They were all very powerful tools that I could definitely see being implemented into this project.
In addition to the J-Pod meet up, I also helped with the dis-assembly of the 1/12th scale model, assembly, and presented the scale model at the 43rd Annual Silicon Valley Electric Vehicle Show & Drive Electric Week. In doing so, I was able to learn more about the track and the bogie itself. I was able to run the code that the team from Korea wrote on my laptop. There were a few complications during the event, as the bogie would fall off the track multiple times. This was caused not only by the unevenness of the track, but the piano wired used for the switching mechanism was not making full contact with the switching servo. This caused the bogie to not fully engage in the switching mechanism. This problem will be taken care of in the next few weeks. 

9.14.2015 Blog Assignment #2: Controls Block system for location/navigation Proposal

After last week's meeting, I brainstormed some ideas on how to improve the cart location tracking system as well as navigation for the carts. I looked into how trains and other forms of transit operate their train-to-train systems. They have a block system in place that keeps tabs on which train is in which block. We were planning to somehow overlay a coordinate grid on the old track to correlate important areas such as turns, long straightaways, and stations to specific blocks or number of blocks. 

There are several methods that can be implemented to track the movements of the carts with the coordinate grid. "rFID" chips were proposed to be installed on each cart to give each cart a specific id. These ID's would be picked by the sensors at the beginning of a block and the end of a block and be communicated back to the main hub. Although this may seem plausible, the reaction time for these chips may be too slow as stated by our mentor. For now, other forms of wireless Local Positioning systems are still being looked into.

Figure 1 - Original Track with Grid system overlayed

Post 3: Fail-Safe Mechanism Improvement

In previous years, there hasn't been a system in place for the fail-safe mechanism in the event of derailments. There are high chances of derailment of the bogie at the turnouts of the track, which would be caused by the wheels falling off of the track due to weight imbalances. After researching about fail-safe mechanisms in other railway systems, the implementation of a claw locking mechanism on the bogie would aim to lock the bogie to the rail in the event of the wheels falling off the track.

Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Thomas Nguyen. I am currently studying mechanical engineering at San Jose State University with a focus in mechatronics.  I plan on working on the scale model of the Spartan Superway project. I'm particularly interested in the controls, bogey fail safe mechanism, and  collision prevention between the cars. Outside of school I like to read comic books, rock climb, and playing video games. I look forward to working with everyone and the advancement of this project.

Class Update: 09/02/15

During the class meet on Wednesday, 09/02/15, I worked with several of the team members involved in the scale model team to split up the scale model into a few sub-groups. I decided that I wanted to work in the controls sub group and contribute to a few other sub-groups such as the stations group. Furthermore, I looked further into how railroad systems prevent their carts from colliding with one another. There are several types of block systems that allows the system to keep tabs on train positions with respect to specific blocks.