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Information

What is NATCAR?
    A competition sponsored by National Semiconductor that gives students the opportunity to design and build a vehicle that tracks a course as fast as it can.   The course is marked by a wire carrying 100mA RMS at 75kHz and white tape.   Students design, build, debug, and optimize all the sensor circuitry, power supplies, motor drivers, and controls.  Natcar 2001 (the race) will occur in late may.  Visit the Natcar website at http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar.

Who competes?
    UC Davis, Cal, San Jose State, Sacramento State, and Oklahoma State are regular competitiors. Stanford successfully built a vehicle last year, but it was not quite finished  in time for the competition.  With an earlier start this year and a bit of experience, we've got high hopes.

Sound Fun?  It's coming your way next quarter (winter) in the form of :

EE192: Electronic Dynamic Control Systems Laboratory (a.k.a Natcar)

Catalog Description:

This is an experimental laboratory targeted at developing skills in electronic system integration involving sensor-based closed-loop control.  The demonstration vehicle for the course will be the design of an autonomous 1/10 scale electric car capable of maneuvering a track in the fastest lap time.  Teams of two or three undergraduate students will design and build an entry to the Natcar engineering design competition  (http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar/).  In support of the course objectives, students will do directed studies on the following topics: optical and  magnetic sensor design, proportional-integral-derivative control, pulse width modulation, servo and DC motor control, and control algorithm implementation with microcontrollers and analog circuitry.  Regular lectures will be given on practical topics relevant to the design, construction, and testing of the vehicles. 

Prerequisites:

EE122 or ME118 required
E105 and EE121 preferred

Topics

• Magnetic Field Sensing and Amplification

• Servo control and Motor drive (many amps), PWM, dealing w/ noise

• DC-DC converters (switching power supplies)

• microprocessor control (HC11 or PIC perhaps...)

• Speed control (PI, steering sensitive, discrete time issues)

• Steering Control (PD, nonlinear & discrete time considerations, matlab simulations)

• Successfull project management (start early, work hard), Pizza, and other non-electronic items of interest

Course Details

TA: Oliver Max
Email:oomax@stanford.edu
Phone: 323-3821

Faculty Mentor: Bob Dutton
Email:dutton@gloworm.stanford.edu

Meeting Times and Places:  TuTh  4:15-6:00 in Packard 064 (downstairs)
Laboratory: Packard 64

Grading

Calendar