Vehicle requirements

I read over the BM art car requirements. I think they will love us! We'll send them full drawings and calculations for electric braking and speed governance etc. The thing I'm most happy to see is that they are NOT trying to lay down specific technical specifications, at which point they would have to institute some half-baked inspection system. Very wise of them. I think we easily meet all their requirements regarding safety, artistic merit, visual impact and plain old fun! Yay!

Vehicle Requirements for BM2004

The rules are much more strict this year.

http://www.burningman.com/on_the_playa/playa_vehicles/index.html

Mechanical assembly

This is a CAD drawing of the drive wheel assembly

Urg! Niggling mechanical details are getting dull. Hafta push through and get to the interesting stuff!

Conceptual drawings

This is approximately what the car will look like.
View from above

View from below

3rd meeting notes

3rd meeting (@Geoff's on 12/2):
geoff, kevin, brady, simon

notable:
simon brought electrical design handout.
we drank brady's les heretiques wine (sorry lars ;-)

discussion:
should we have absolute or relative postion rotors?
- with relative we have to calibrate. we would do this at the beginning of startup
- the absolute will not have to calibrate
- the relative pr's cost 25 bucks
- absolute pr's cost 300
- we need either 3 or 6


breakdown
- build in mechanical/electrical redundancy
- have other wheels
- kevin & simon

as we design we should decide what parts are the proper combination of:
- cost
- likelihood of needing replacing
- ability to fix (on/off the playa

parts to be considered:
- wheel
- motor controller
- rotor
- batteries
- chains

software:
- blog
- public facing
- will be publicized
- blogger

questions:
- can we charge all batteries at once?
- what's the cost of the chargers? does simon have one?
- should we put castors on the three dummy pieces?

tasks:
- kevin to cost the steel and calculate weight of steel and batteries
- simon to send kevin rotary encoders website (www.usdigital.com)
- brady - set up blog on blogger
- brady - lighting/external design concepts
- geoff - command console design


next meeting: tuesday after new years 1/6
- geoff may be gone

More details

The vehicle is a circular-shaped electrically powered car with three wheels. Each wheel is driven independently and can also rotate about its axis. The car will be able to drive in any direction as well as spinning on the spot. Driving along while rotating and doing waltz-like maneuvers are also possible. It will be controlled by a joystick and some other controls by a driver who sits with the other people facing inwards on the circular couch.

There will be nine microprocessors - two in each wheel controller and one central unit coordinating the motions - posing a considerable software challenge. They will all communicate using an RS485 serial link. We are driving this car using three e-tek motors for about 6 hp of continuous power. The maximum loaded weight will be about 1300kg and we should be able to go from 0-10mph in around 3 seconds with a top speed of around 15mph.

We will probably incorporate a sound system and some crazy lighting.

We have one expert on machining and mechanical design and one expert on electronics. The remaining people have a broad skill range and will contribute in many areas.

We are 5 friends in Seattle who are building an artcar from scratch for Burningman. It will be shaped like a dogdish with a couch on its inner ring that is large enough to seat 12 people. It will have three wheels that will take us in any direction we want. We are in the design stages now, but plan on building this january.

You'll be able to find us in Camp Comfort at BM 04.