For our Mech 223 project course, we were tasked with designing a miniature train for a competition. We aimed to carry maximum weight, while overcoming hills and obstacles, having good speed and using as few batteries and motors.
I waterjet cut our chassis and developed numerous prototypes, such as a speeder with a gear-changing mechanism. I also developed a system to slow the motor on downhills using an accelerometer, Arduino and an H-bridge. Additionally, I came up with the idea and design of placing a long steel bar across our speeder which greatly improved our stability and allowed up to increase our speed without tipping around the tight bends. This design worked very well, as we ended up finishing 2nd out of 20 teams.