Define a problem
Our 3 goals for this project were
1. Most efficient car
2. can use renewable resources
3. getting done on time
1. Most efficient car
2. can use renewable resources
3. getting done on time
Generating concepts
After some brainstorming we decided to modify our robot by adding a gear ratio. We did this because if we did a gear ratio with a big gear on the motor and a small gear on the back wheels it would make our car move a lot faster. Another modification we added was making the front and back wheels bigger so that the car would travel farther with one rotation of the wheel. However we didnt make any modifications to our circuit.
Develop a Solution
construct and test a prototype
evaluate the solution
We had an okay experience with solar, hydrogen cell, and battery powers. They were easy too wire but the only issue we had for these three was finding the voltage and current for each of them. After this they were pretty easy to use and powered our car very efficiently. Also our testing results went very well, after much testing and knowing that our robot worked 100% of the time we made more modifications by changing the gear ratio and moving the place of the breadboard. Our device was already the fastest when we first started, so to make sure that our robot had a 100% chance win rate, we made the gear connected to the back wheels super small so the back wheels would spin a lot faster. When we first built our robot we had the wrong gear ratio to get the wheels faster, this was our only mistake with the rest of the robot. We learned about wiring and how to use solar and hydrogen cell power to power a vehicle or object.
Present a Solution
At this stage of build we began to add the biggest wheels we could find to the back of the robot
In this stage of the build we began to put on our new gear ratio with the biggest and smallest gear we could find
This was the final stage of the robot with our completed circuit and final gear ratio
The limitations of renewable energy are that sometimes renewable energy isn't power full so you would need a lot of that energy source. Or sometimes the renewable energy gets used up very fast. For example when testing the Hydrogen fuel cell it only gave our robot power for a couple seconds. Also when testing the solar power it didn't make our robot go as fast as the batteries did.