Snow Groomer Automation System

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.

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. The demo is from revision 2 which used a lowside current shunt resistor instead of a hall effect current sensor as well as only integrated the discharging, and not the charging.

Obstacle Detection

The obstacle detection system concept uses ultrasonic sensors to identify obstacles and infrared (IR) 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 each other in a hallway and both move back and forth trying to avoid each other in the same directions until hopefully someone doesn't allowing the paths to not collide.

After testing it was concluded the IR sensors were sensitive to vibration caused by the vehicle, the two solutions to resolve this that are being considered are validating their data with the obstacle sensors and/or use IR sensors which are designed for mobile use, which will require further research.  After the ultrasonic sensor testing was completed, it was concluded that ultrasonic sensors cannot reliably detect humans, likely because clothing absorbs sound waves. Because of this issue, if the obstacle sensors were to validate IR data, a different technology would have to be used.

Below is a video of the obstacle detection demo, for the reasons shown above the detection technology will be changing either in part or entirely. To ensure the operational control system can remain the same, the sensor data processing will be required to process into a consistent "data packet" to be used by the operational control system acting as an abstraction layer.