Evan Sells Good News

By EVAN SELL   April 6, 2018. Friday 1:30PM

Wireless Mobile Charger for Electronic Sensors

For the senior design poster presentation, I spoke with Eric Downham, a senior studying mechanical engineering. For this course, seniors were assigned to clients, some of which are professors at the university, others of which work for engineering companies outside of Mercer. Eric and his team were assigned to Dr. Fu, a professor here at Mercer. The task assigned was to develop a prototype of a wireless mobile charger that can be operated to charge electronic sensors. This prototype also needed to be built to enable a platform for future upgrades.

The prototype has the ability to raise and lower itself accordingly to conduct the wireless charging process. This is primarily in instances where wireless charging is needed for electronic sensors that are located underground, such as those at golf courses that monitor the soil. After series of testing, the prototype proved its success in accomplishing the objective and in durability, but the battery life for the RC was insignificant (about an hour) and due to the weight of the charger the car was sluggish. As a result of a lack of time in meeting the deadline, these issues were unable to be addressed immediately. To fix this problem, upgrades will be made in the future to increase the strength and speed of the RC car.

"The experiences between this project and my longevity in this business and professional world contributed, through the experimentation and problem solving, to addressing the many issues that arose in the final production of this product.”
-Eric Downham

By EVAN SELL   April 6, 2018. Friday 9AM

Hill Climber

After interviewing a team member of the competition, freshman biomedical engineering major Zack Neely, I learned the following: The Freshmen Design Competition is hosted through an Intro to Engineering Design course, usually consisting of freshmen. This competition essentially counts as their final exam, so a lot is on the line for these young lads. They began by creating their teams, and the professor then assigned a “client” (who is a faculty member) to each team. Teams then had to collaborate with their client and treat this as a real-world situation. From there, the client provided the team their task, car specifications, and instructions on how to accomplish the mission. K’Nex car kits were to be used for design. There were three types of motors to choose from: a propelled motor system (where the car is pulled back and elasticity launches it forward); a battery-operated motor; and a mousetrap. The mousetrap style motor was ideal for flat land racing, so that was not an option, as the objective was to climb uphill. All the teams used a hybrid between the propelled system and the battery motor.

The mission assigned to Zack’s team was to create a miniature motorized car that could climb uphill faster than the competing teams. This particular competition was known as “Hill Climber”. There were six rounds, beginning with six teams, each round of which eliminated the team last to finish. A 6” inclination began the first round; each round after progressively became steeper as the last round capped off with a 36” incline. Zack’s team was the first to lose, and they lost miserably.

I asked Zack what went wrong with his project and what he learned from this massive defeat. He said his team was concerned only with ensuring their car would make it up any incline. They built it heavier and stronger than the rest. But it came at a fatal cost: speed. While they had everyone beat at overall strength, this didn’t help them with their MAIN objective, which was to win the uphill race. The team that did win created a lighter and faster build, focusing more on speed than power.

"Whether its engineering or trying to solve a problem, don't focus on only one solution. That is why we lost."
- Zack Neely