IGVC 2023 Test Ramp

For the last couple of years IGVC has included a ramp in a portion of their course called "no mans land". The ramp serves as both a challenge for the mechanical systems and the computer vision. Detecting the ramp and deciding not to go around it, as well actually being capable of driving over it, are both unavoidable requirements of the competition. Using scrap wood from the OU Rawls Engineering Practice Facility (where our robotics lab lives) I designed and constructed a test ramp that would mimic the incline of the ramp.

CAD Modeling

Cad modeling for this project was rather simple. The important part was to get a realistic incline, but there was not really a hard limit on this. The challenge was to ensure that the material used did not exceed the scrap that was lying around. Of course, we could've ordered more wood if necessary, but constructing the ramp while wasting as few resources as possible was an attainable goal for the project.

Testing during Eweek

We used the ramp to test our drive train right away. The first time we took our mechanical system out was during Eweek, an event that Engineers club hosts during the winter to advertise the engineering programs at OU and showcase our competition teams. While we had no problem scaling the ramp mechanically, it did help us identify problems in the interrupt structure of our motor commands and PID firmware. Smoothing these issues out helped our movement become perfectly straight, even at very low speeds.