Demonstration day assessment, 2021
Our team received an award for Outstanding Performance and placed Top 10 in a cohort of 1000+ students. We achieved a final mark of 18/20 for this project, and I achieved a grade of 7 (out of 7) overall for the course with the addition of individual assessment and a group final report.
I predominantly assisted with the structural and control subsystems. I collated and formatted the final report for this project, which is attached below.
This major team project called for the submission of a proof of concept prototype for an Unmanned Firefighting Vehicle (UFV), with documentation detailing the development and design considerations as well as potential scale up considerations. The prototyped vehicle, Casper, is remotely controlled and extinguished the "fires" present in the testing zone—simulating a rescue for people and properties from an aircraft crash or fire and from other fires that may occur an airport runway. The design also considers safety, financial, social, and environmental aspects of the project.
The concept design has the following functional requirements:
Drive Subsystem: the vehicle should be able to travel forward and backward at a stable and controllable speed, start and stop moving, and maintain travelling on a straight line.
Fluid Delivery Subsystem: The vehicle should have a mechanism to pressurise (pump) and direct the firefighting fluid (water) from a reservoir (water tank located on the vehicle) to an elevated nozzle system in order to aim, spray water at a controllable flow rate and extinguish fires (cooling heat sources) located at different positions and elevations.
Control Subsystem: The vehicle should have mechanisms in place to control the Drive Subsystem and the Fluid Delivery Subsystem. The degree to which the vehicle is automated is open to consideration.
Structural Subsystem: The structure of the vehicle should accommodate and support the Drive Subsystem, the Fluid Delivery Subsystem and parts of the Control Subsystem. The structure should be robust, stable and resist movement while the firefighting fluid is ejected out of the elevated spray system.