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Electrical Systems Overview
TODO: sub-sub-subteam explanations
This page summarizes the sub-subteams of the Electrical subteams and their statements of work.
The robots each run on 30V battery power, but the individual components that consume power on said robots will require varying voltages and currents. Furthermore, these components are also located in different locations on the robot, necessitating a wiring schema to link everything together. The General Wiring team focuses on the Chassis and Turret boards to facilitate these two functions.
The chassis of the robot contains as loads:
- 4 drive pod motors to provide locomotion to the robot
- 2 yaw motors to rotate the turret The chassis board also connects to the turret board via a slip-ring.
The turret contains as loads:
- 5 motors to control the shooter mechanism's flywheels, feeders, and waterwheel
- 1 pitch motor to aim the shooter
- An Orin Nano module for computer vision These two boards are mostly for connection, with relatively little circuitry being built on the boards themselves. The General Wiring sub-subteam focuses on designing the boards in accordance with each year's volumetric and load requirements and works more closely with other RoboMaster subteams.
The power consumption of the robots varies with time, sometimes exceeding the 90W power budget afforded by the battery. To better utilize this power budget, the Supercap team is tasked with creating a supercapacitor system that can store excess power during times of low power demand for use when power demand exceeds 90W. The supercapacitor system can be split into Hardware, Control, and Firmware sub-subteams.
The primary hardware of the supercapacitor system is a bidirectional DC-DC voltage converter. The Hardware sub-subteam designs and characterizes the converter circuit to maximize power efficiency whilst meeting volumetric and thermal constraints.
The bidirectional voltage converter manages power flowing in and out of the supercapacitors via a control system supervised by the Control sub-subteam. The Control sub-subteam is tasked with characterizing the behavior of the control system and designing its parameters in accordance with time-domain parameters.
The control system for the supercapacitor system is implemented in a microcontroller on the supercap converter board. The Firmware sub-subteam converts the continuous-time control system designed by the Control sub-subteam into a discrete-time form realizable in the microcontroller and implements anti-windup and other safety protections to ensure reliable performance of the overall system.
Please message the electrical chat on the discord if you have any questions!