Weekly Progress - Week 2

In week 2, we had to revise our initial design concepts in order to accommodate the 10-week quarter and also to increase the innovative aspect of the project.

After conducting some competitive product analysis, it was found that our initial "Demolition Derby" idea wasn't as original as we had thought.  A very similar product that involved the construction and deconstruction of crashing cars had already been done.

By suggestion of the professor & TA team, we now instead are doing an *educational toy car game that involves kids building and crashing their own cars as "crash test simulations."

The indicator of whether or not the car was built to safely enough will be whether or not a crash test dummy flies through the roof of the car upon impact.  Below is an initial design sketch of "Crash Course" (title is tentative).

Figure 1: Initial design sketch of "Crash Course"

Here is a couple images of the initial design of the 3D model created with Google SketchUp of "Crash Course". This will most likely not be what the final product will look like. The 3D model is purely for an idea of what we want to create. As you can see from the images, there are different types of cars. There is also a row of car parts. The images are showing that you can assemble different parts together to create many different types of cars (vehicles is the more actual term). Most likely the vehicles you see in the 3D model could be created from the vehicle parts we will make.

Image 1: Examples of some vehicles that could be created

Image 2: An example of a test dummy, an egg

Image 2 shows you an egg in the truck. The egg is an example of a possible test dummy for "Crash Course". If we are going to use eggs as the test dummy that tests the safety of the vehicle built, it is highly likely that we will not use real eggs but fake eggs that breaks depending on the pressure (impact) exerted on it. Another possibility is that we would use boils eggs or use a completely different test dummy instead.

Image 3: Spring mechanism

Image 3 shows a spring mechanism that will propel the car forward to crash into the wall. Again, this does not show the final product. This only shows the general idea of what we want to do. We have not yet designed the spring mechanism.