Subteam Information
The Vehicle Controls Subteam's primary responsibilities include hardware design and selection, programming, and software management.
Vehicle Controls Team Lead: Spencer Johnson
General Overview
The Vehicle Controls sub-team manages all electronics and programming for Primarch, our liquid-propelled self-landing rocket in the Collegiate Propulsive Lander Challenge. The team handles all areas of electronics, including sensors, communication, programming, PCBs, motor controls, servos, and batteries. The group's end goal is to develop an electronic system to safely and efficiently control the liquid lander's flight. This is done primarily through hardware design and selection, programming, and software management.
Hardware
One of the team's primary responsibilities is designing the hardware layout for our full-scale lander and selecting the components to be used. Components will be stored in the center of the lander, with batteries and other components stacked on top of one another. A Raspberry Pi Model 4B will control both the full-scale and the sub-scale. To steer the sub-scale, we will use 2 servos on a gimbal to control the engine's thrust angle. The full-scale version, on the other hand, will use 2 linear actuators due to the forces applied to the lander.
Software & Programming
The other primary responsibility of the Vehicle Controls subteam is the software and programming. All programming will be written in Python and centered primarily on a feedback-based PID equation that determines how far the engine moves based on the rocket's angle. The computer will control the motor's thrust and angle, and we will have it hover before proceeding to steering and position control. At full scale, we will be able to control thrust percentage and angle using the same computer.
Current Projects
One of the Vehicle Controls subteam’s current projects is to design the printed circuit board (PCB) that will fly a sub-scale prototype before they start working on the full-scale lander. The subscale will act as a drone, balanced on a single counter-rotating propeller, and fly the same route as the full-scale model while steering with two servo motors on a gimbal. The drone will be composed of three PCBs: Battery Monitor, Computer-to-Motor/Servo Interface, and Sensor Interface.
Their goal is to have the PCBs designed, ordered, and assembled as soon as possible so they can begin actual testing. While waiting for the PCB design, their other main focus is programming the sub-scale, with hopes of flying by the end of the semester. For programming, everything will be split into parts, such as sensor reading and feedback to drone control and steering. We will also have an antenna on the rocket to communicate with the ground station, so we will need to build and test it.