Motor Testing Platform

I'm an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at University of Illinois - Chicago.  I've joined the Engineering Design Team, where we design robots to compete against teams from other schools.  This video shows one of our robots at the Jerry Sanders Design Competition at UIUC in January 2013.  EDT fields a number of robots for different competition, some robots controlled via RC while others act autonomously.

As a new member of the team, I was given the option of choosing from a number of side projects that will support EDT during design and competition.  Some of the projects were to design a lift for running tests on one of the autonomous robots, a trailer which provided shelter and power for field tests, and custom built boxes for a new set of breadboards the team recently purchased.  I decided to work on a fourth project, a DC motor testing station.

EDT uses a number of different brushless DC motors for its robots.  While these motors are specified to output certain ranges of RPM and torque at different levels of current and voltage, the team needs to know exactly how each motor will perform so there are no surprises in the middle of a competition.  The station will provide a mount and enclosure for the motor being tested, automatically run the test, and then output the data to a USB stick or possibly to a connected PC running custom software to interpret the data.

I chose this project because it will require a large range of engineering knowledge, from electrical and mechanical design to hardware and software programming.  My previous design experience is limited to class work and arcade controller design, so this will be a great opportunity to expand my skill set in a short period of time.

This blog will detail my progress.  Since my background so far is in electrical engineering, I've begun at the input side of the motor, measuring the voltage across and current through the motor.  I'm doing this with an Atmega8 Microcontroller and the majority of my initial posts will be on this subject.