EVER '11

I'm back!

EVER (the international conference on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies, except with the R and E reversed because it is French) is my favorite conference EVER. Last time, the Cap Kart crew and I went in 2009, confused a lot of professors, and ate crepes. This time, Charles and I went in 2011, confused a lot of professors, and ate crepes. Oh, and test-drove an electric box thing that (probably) ran on an Arduino:

...all the Nissan Leaves were spoken for, okay?

Actually, I kinda liked it because you could clearly feel all the inner workings of the electric drive. It reminded me of the Cap Kart...you had to press an LED-lit button with an arrow on it to choose forward or reverse, and it had the turning radius of a small truck. Not sure how well that bodes for commercialization, but it was fun in sport mode, anyway.

Actually, we were there to present a paper on Miniature Electric Hub Motors, which if you're new to this game, is the key technology in Pneu Scooter, BWD, and about one third of the crazy things Charles builds. Generally speaking, the miniature hub motors are more of a fun hobby for us, but we really couldn't pass up this opportunity to disrupt the atmosphere of an academic conference with them.

Yo, where can we park these?

Oh right, I forgot to mention that we brought hardware. As it turns out, both Pneu Scooter and RazEr rEVolution fit well into checked air baggage. (I took Pneu Scooter to and from Singapore as I was completing it.) The only tricky part is the lithium batteries, but according to the TSA, one large (up to 300Wh) battery installed in a device is allowed in checked baggage. Pneu Scooter's battery clocks in at 145Wh, so I should be fine, right? ... Right?

Overall, the presentation was well-received. The chair for our session was Professor Zhu, who is sort-of like a permanent magnet motor deity. In fact, at EVER '09, he delivered the keynote presentation on fractional-slot PM motors, which is exactly the type that we tend to use for the mini hub motors. Of course, then, one of our main goals was to get Prof. Zhu to test drive the scooters.

Mission accomplished.

The academic conference was fairly standard - a lot of math. The highlight, for me, was a dirt-simple explanation of sensorless control using a flux observer that is exactly what I've been looking for. Sensorless control may be silly for EVs, but I'm still willing to give it a try just to see if I can implement it on my hardware. My hunch is that I will have to improve my current sensors a bit. (3ph 4.0?)

The best thing about bringing vehicles, though, is that we got to crash some of the concurrent events, such as the two-wheel vehicle Ride and Drive...

...and the two-wheel vehicle Acceleration Test...

...which I'm not sure we were supposed to be allowed to do. Considering that the other entries all used pedal assist (and one had more than the nominal two wheels), and absolutely none of them fit in a suitcase, the mini hub motor scooters put up a good fight. I think most people were surprised; I don't know if that's because the scooters actually kept up with the e-bikes, or if it was because they had no idea where we came from or if we were even entered in the race.

Overall, another fun trip to the weird bubblestate of Monaco. I leave you with my proposal for how all suitcases should be constructed:

Fuck little plastic wheels.

EVER / e-Kart Wrap-Up

Well, I'm back in Cambridge now trying to catch up on a week's worth of work. (It helps that I'm still operating on a slightly shifted time sense; I've been getting up at 6AM and going to sleep at 11PM recently. I realize this is fairly normal...but not at MIT.)

Anyway, I had a great trip that will undoubtedly be one of the most memorable experiences of my higher education. I can't help but think that at some point in my life, when electric cars are at least a common sight, if not prevalent, I will think back to this and bore people with my stories of the early days. What's that? I bore people with my stories already? Well then mission accomplished, I guess.

I already went on about EVER in my last post, so the only real update I have for that is an amazing gallery of pictures:
http://web.mit.edu/scolton/www/EVER_pics
Photo credits: Cam T. (mostly), Max H., Paul P., and myself.

After EVER, I moved on alone to e-Kart, a French electric go-kart competition for schools and universities. It reminded me a lot of FIRST, in the team structure, educational emphasis, and competition environmont. The karts there were decidedly faster than ours, on average, but also a bit lighter I think. (Stupid Americans and our over-sized vehicles.) There was also a lithium-ion kart with an AC motor that I think is the most drool-invoking go-kart I've ever seen (third clip, #77):



The others were also very impressive, in both power and degree of instrumentation. Most were heavily student-built, too. Here is my small gallery from Tours, France, where e-Kart was held this year:
http://web.mit.edu/scolton/www/ekart_pics

I don't know yet what exactly the path I take from here is, but I've seen enough now to know that this is an awesome educational opportunity. Maybe there's a role for me in creating something of an open-source reference for this kind of project. We'll see. I'm looking forward to seeing America's first foray into educational alternative fuel (not just electric) kart challenges this in May: Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School is hosting the Go Green Go-Kart Competition, open to all NC schools. Until then, preparation for 2.007 will probably thoroughly occupy my time!

Happy New Year

It's been a while...

In the latest exciting news, our Cap Kart paper entitled - ready for this? - "A Simple Series Battery/Ultracapacitor Drive System for Light Vehicles and Educational Demonstration," was accepted for presentation at the 2009 Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER '09) conference in Monaco. Ridiculous title aside, it was a fun paper to write; if you'd told me last year that my first real publication as a graduate student (or ever) would come from this project, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

Cynical Shane would like to point out that this project, now accepted as real research by more than just me, was done quickly, simply, and inexpensively. Not that it was easy. In fact, there were more times during this project than ever before that I've felt overwhelmed by technical difficulties. But it stayed on schedule and on budget the whole way, and produced real experimental data from an actual physical piece of hardware. Which is more than I can say for some other projects I've been involved with recently.

Good Shane says: Look at that view! I'm happy and proud for the team that an idea which I knew was a good one has made it this far. I can't wait for the trip, which falls during my spring break, and the chance to see some other really cool projects in the field. It'll give me something to look forward during the Boston winter months.

All that's left to do now is dismantle the spinning disks of doom, which have somehow served their purpose without killing anyone, and get the kart out to the track some time when it stops snowing. (May?) Plenty of stuff to keep me busy in the meantime. Happy 2009.