INVESTIGATION INTO SPEED VS ACCURACY FOR AN AUTOMATED VEHICLE CHARGING SYSTEM

Cochran, Bryan Freeman

Title:

INVESTIGATION INTO SPEED VS ACCURACY FOR AN AUTOMATED VEHICLE CHARGING SYSTEM

dc.contributor.advisor	Bras, Berdinus A.
dc.contributor.author	Cochran, Bryan Freeman
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Mazumdar, Anirban
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Ueda, Jun
dc.contributor.department	Mechanical Engineering
dc.date.accessioned	2022-01-14T16:02:44Z
dc.date.available	2022-01-14T16:02:44Z
dc.date.created	2020-12
dc.date.issued	2020-09-16
dc.date.submitted	December 2020
dc.date.updated	2022-01-14T16:02:44Z
dc.description.abstract	Recent advances in energy storage technology have finally allowed Electric Vehicles to enter the mainstream market. The suite of electronics used on these vehicles for power management and driving assistance opens the possibility of these vehicles operating autonomously. An autonomous vehicle must be recharged for it to drive to a destination beyond the range of battery system or for it to operate continuously. To extend autonomous operation, an autonomous charging system was developed. A design requirement was that the system be made using consumer grade components that are common to the DIY IOT movement to decrease system cost. The design and manufacture of the autonomous charging system will be briefly discussed but is not the focus of this thesis. The focus of this thesis is the investigation into the relationship between the operating speed and the accuracy of the automation algorithm. Initial development focused on delivering the best performance, but the run time of the automation algorithm was more than ten minutes, which was too lengthy. The only portions of the code that could be improved were the hunt cycles for the port cover and the port detent. During the hunt cycles, the algorithm uses closed loop feedback between a vision system and the kinematics of the robot. The feedback loop compares the BB centroid to the center of the camera’s FOV. The hunt is completed when the comparison drops below a defined threshold. For the hunts, the accuracy was decreased by increasing the threshold. Three thresholds were chosen for the Port hunt and the Detent hunt and those thresholds represented high, medium, and low accuracy. An experiment was conducted using different combinations of accuracy for each hunt. The hypothesis was that it was possible for the cycle time to be reduced by decreasing accuracy without sacrificing system performance. Test results validated the hypothesis and the cycle time was reduced by 16% without impacting system performance. This was done by using the lowest accuracy parameter for the charging Port hunt and using the medium accuracy for the Detent hunt. During the process of conducting the DOE, additional areas of improvement were identified for both the software and the mechanical systems. The proposed improvements were developed and implemented prior to outdoor, full-cycle testing. Outdoor tests were then completed and verified that the implemented improvements along with the accuracy parameters that were the outputs from the test results decreased the full cycle time by 16%.
dc.description.degree	M.S.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/65981
dc.language.iso	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology
dc.subject	Parallel robot
dc.subject	Electric vehicle
dc.subject	Remote charging system
dc.subject	Autonomous charging system
dc.subject	Autonomous fueling system
dc.subject	Design of experiment
dc.subject	Raspberry pi
dc.subject	Arduino
dc.subject	vision system
dc.subject	Robot operating system
dc.subject	ROS
dc.subject	Neural network
dc.title	INVESTIGATION INTO SPEED VS ACCURACY FOR AN AUTOMATED VEHICLE CHARGING SYSTEM
dc.type	Text
dc.type.genre	Thesis
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.advisor	Bras, Berdinus A.
local.contributor.corporatename	George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename	College of Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication	9c522ea2-cfd8-4ff0-ac9c-b62b07f7c32a
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	c01ff908-c25f-439b-bf10-a074ed886bb7
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
thesis.degree.level	Masters