Our initial idea was to make a flying car that could flip it's wheels up and turn into a quadcopter.  We quickly decided against that because it was complicated and needed gyros for stable flight. We decided to make a hovercraft that could go over different terrain. We started by with a design that used a single propeller for lift and two small propellers for forward movement and steering.  Unfurunately, the lift propellar had to much force and spun the whole hover car. The second desing used two motors that are counter rotating to stop the hover car from spinning. The hover car was made from foam core and had basic support frames. We added decorative frames that made it look like a Dodge Challenger / Charger. We call it the AeroXcar. We used Rhino every step of the way to make all the pieces for the hover car. All our pieces were laser cut out of foam core and the motor mounts were out of thin wood. The AeroXcar includes a arduino mini which is programmed to allow remote control of the lift motors. The back 2 mini motors are controlled by the arduino and can control the motors at diferent speeds to stop spin and turn. There is a 6 channel receiver that connects to a controller. The left stick turns the lift propellers on while the right stick is used to turn the hover car. We use a Lithium Polymer battery to power our car. If we had more time we would put bigger motors on the back that would make it go forward faster and turn better. 

Problem:

In film it is difficult to steadily and realistically capture shots that illustrate a wide range of perspectives while in motion. This problem especially exists for those without access to professional film equipment. 

Solution:

A user friendly robot that follows a predetermined path has remote controlled camera atop its base. The remote controlled feature of the camera allows the videographer to control camera angles without intervening the shot. 

Detailed Solution:

The small robot follows a a strip of black tape that allows you to stand back while the robot takes the shot. While the robot is moving you can adjust the position of the camera from a distance using the remote control. This provides a clean shot without having the inconsistency of human movement. 

Main Theme:

Our main theme was to show perspective by using height in a steady way. It follows a predetermined line and has a remote controlled head. Our project started out by focusing on the different perspective idea, but then the focus shifted to the remote control focus to distance humans from the wooden box. Our biggest challenge was the programing part, the following line coding.

Ever wanted to recreate the racecars from your favorite video games or movies? What about bringing to life your favorite concept car? Vroom your way through this Studio by creating your own remote control (RC) model racecar inspired by vehicles from Grand Theft Auto, Burnout, Need for Speed, Tron, Batman, Fast and Furious, Speedracer and more. Learn about all the components that make your vehicle go vroom - motors, batteries, engines, radio signals, types of chassis and wheels, robotic intelligence - and push your vehicle to the creative limit with an innovative design!

In this Studio, students will be constructing futuristic robo-electric cars! These cars will be designed to maneuver and turn in agile ways and speed across a race course. Students will ride the waves of radio frequency and modulation, thus understanding transmitters, receivers, and RC communication. Other topics of discussion include on-road versus off-road suspension, how RC models compare to full-sized cars, and levels of robotic intelligence (automaton, remote control, teleoperation, full autonomy). Students will experience the hands-on joy of soldering, drilling, and building circuits before applying a custom paint job for the finishing touch. Then it’s off to the races in a final exhibition where the cars will race-off in the Robo Cars showdown!

Register here!

Focus Skills/Subjects/Technologies:

  Design

  Physics (Electricity, Magnetism)

  Engineering

  Programming

  Electronics

   Robotics (Arduino)

  Sensors & Actuators

   Digital Fabrication (Laser-cutting, 3d Printing)

   3d Modeling

Prerequisites:

• Enrolling students must be between the ages of 11 to 18 (middle and high school students)

Our vehicle is a state of the art car that can drive extremely fast, but, this vehicle is no sports car! No, it's George The Rhino! George is a special model of the super duper fast, ball shooting, horn ramming soccer car! Yes, you heard me right George is a soccer car!

Our original idea was just a simple rocket league car that rammed soccer balls and hoped to score a goal. After some thinking, we realized that it was too bland, too easy. So we amped it up a bit by adding a rhino theme. We meant to add a rhino head trailing flame on the side but, that's just a design. Nothing hard or complicated. So of course, being the teenage boys that we were, we added crossbows. Yeah, crossbows. Makes sense on a rhino, doesn't it? We planned on a conveyor belt to hold mini crossbows that rained down on our enemy's. There was only one problem. We had no enemies; we were just your average soccer car. So we changed it to just one crossbow because it was cool. We still had no enemies though so eventually the crossbow turned into a ball shooter under the excuse of attempting to control the ball. The first idea was a funnel that the balls sat in and one at a time they would go down the chute and get punched by some mechanism. This approach changed to it shoots from the side because the horn was in the way. It then changed to a funnel that was right above the ball shooter. This idea made it much easier, but it didn't work out so well. Then came the brainstorming of how to fix the problem. We came up with the idea of the chamber or magazine attached to the shooter. The result was a box with a ramp in which the balls would rest. When they fell into a small section at the front of the box, a solenoid would punch the ball sending it shooting forward and (hopefully) hitting the ball.

The design of George the Rhino changed a lot over the time we had. The first model wasn't a rhino at all, and it was more or less a big mess, but that was just the first prototype; however, the first model gave us the idea to base the car after a rhino in the first place. We were designing the second prototype when we ran into some problems. We couldn't decide on what ideas to add to George and what not to add. There was an idea of a booster on the back, a crossbow, and much more. Everyone kept giving us new ideas and advice, and we all got very confused and frustrated. This minor setback lost us about a day, but we got back on track quickly. We finally decided on the ball shooter, a ramming mechanism on the front, and paddles to control the ball, and we quickly designed and built our second prototype. As we thought, there were many errors; however, this did not set us back. We kept finding and fixing the mistakes until everything was ready in the design. We assembled George the Rhino in 3D, just to make sure everything worked. We laser cut the new model out of thin wood, and there were still one or two things we missed. We quickly fixed those and assembled and attached the wheels and motors. We added the electronics and built the ram and attached it. 

Today we finished our final idea. Our final idea had to get through many prototyping, drawing and editng stages to get where we are. There were many ideas about the design and even though at first we didnt like the idea we finally came through to make it. Even our final idea had ideas because there were many different pieces to make and design and at some points it seemed like we had finalized some part we realized that there was something wrong with that idea. The idea that we finally came up with was originally pushed to the side because we thought that we had a better idea. But in fact it actually was going to be to hard to assemble and the final was a more concrete idea. Our idea went through many stages including cardboard and hand drawings.