Written by: Larry D Frost May 21, 2014 First Place Winners of the 2014 Paul Michael Salmon Outstanding Engineering Design Award are Sjohn Chambers, Lee Ann Hanback, Sunny Patel, and Scott Schiavone for their Senior Design Project "On-Track". The OnTrack project allows users to track and control model locomotives wirelessly via an Android application. The tracking of these locomotives is based on collecting sensor data from the sensors that are attached to the locomotives. This data is used to determine position and velocity. The Android application has full control of the locomotives via DCC and LocoNet communication protocols. Custom hardware has been developed to handle the bridge between the locomotives, sensors, and the application. This project forms the basis for an innovative software safety course which is being developed at UAH by Drs. Kulick and Coe that will utilize location and velocity aware model trains to emulate the characteristics of the congressionally-mandated Positive Train Control system, which will allow for centralized control of U.S. trains in national emergencies. The OnTrack project utilizes inertial measurement methodologies and other techniques that can be easily adapted to real-world trains in a GPS challenged environment. Please see sites.google.com/a/uah.edu/uah-ontrack/home for more information.
