Automated Snow Groomer

Project Background

At VTSU Randolph we have had a ski hill since around 1939. The original rope tow was installed in 1960 and replaced in 2011. It operates under purely natural snow conditions and is open to all VTSU Randolph community.

The current initiative targets adding automated snow grooming capability to the ski hill with the first project by the 2024 mechanical class capstone having developed a proof of concept chassis from snowmobile tracks. This proof of concept is shown in the second image on the right.

Project & Problem Definition

This project is Amelia Vlahogiannis, Luke Williams, and I's senior project.

The objective of this project is to design and implement an automated control system for handling drive, navigation and safety as well as supporting future expansion.

Requirements:

Self & Situational Awareness (Replacing the human’s senses)
Operation Modes:
- Manual (Remote Control)
- Automatic Drive Control (Replacing the human)
  - Grooming path navigation
  - Emergency decision making
Safety
- Mechanisms for Machine & Technician Safety
- Guards & Indicators for Bystander Protection
Temperature & Snow Depth Telemetry
Design Considerations
- Must Be Weatherproof
- Must Be Expandable

This project started in late November (with a pause during holiday break) and is currently active and set to be completed by May, this page may be updated throughout that time but will definitely be updated after the project is completed.

This page was last updated 2/25/26

Project Subsystems & Division of Responsibilities

Below are two images, the first being our draft block diagram and the second being our division of responsibilities. These are not finalized diagrams and may receive updates throughout the project.

Draft block diagram of the solution, is currently revision 1 and could continue see updates throughout the project. The first main change made was condensing the operation and sensor controllers into a single controller.

Division of responsibilities diagram used for determining which requirements fall on which member of the team.

Sensor Subsystem

Safety and emergency decisions are made using data collected by the sensor subsystem, which is broken into two parts: system monitoring, obstacle detection.

System Monitoring

The system monitoring part identifies and estimates the state of the system for use in decision making. The three datasets collected are from the motor drivers, interior temperature, and from a current shunt resistor. The current shunt resistor data is used to estimate the battery charge using an integral of the current measured over time.

The diagram above is a simple diagram representing how components within the system are connected for system monitoring.

On 2/18 & 2/19 the thermal and current sensing proof of concepts were demonstrated, a video of the demo is below.

Obstacle Detection

The obstacle detection system uses automotive ultrasonic parking sensors to identify obstacles and infrared motion sensors to identify whether the obstacles are humans (or other animals). The identification of a human/animal compared to a static obstacle is important, as animals may move to avoid the snow groomer in the same direction the snow groomer moves to avoid the animal. The easiest way to visualize this is when two people walk towards eachother in a hallway and both move back and forth trying to avoid eachother in the same directions until hopefully someone doesnt allowing the paths to not collide.

The sensors used were updated recently and the diagrams have not yet been updated, once updated they will appear here.

Page updated

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