Lab 4

Net ID: pp386

Objective: Characterizing the RC car

Part A

1) What is the charging time for the car?
The car uses an 850 mAh battery and on being charged via a USB charger through a regular socket, the battery took 1hr and 22 min to charge to full. The light indicator on the charger turns off when the full charging is done.

2) What is the battery lifetime for the full charge of the car? The battery lifetime is pretty decent when idle but when the car is moving continuously, my battery lasted for 12 minutes and 24 seconds.

3) What are the dimensions of the car? The car has the following dimensions:
Wheel diameter: 8 cm
End to end length from wheels: 18 cm
End to end length of body: 16 cm
Body width: 7.3 cm
Body Thickness: 4.6 cm

Part B

1) Can the car spin around its own axis? Can the car drift?

The above video shows that the car can reliably spin around its own axis and thus the answer is yes. The control to make the car spin around its own axis is either a continued left press or right press from the controller. The car can also drift by accelerating forward or backward and then turning left/right while accelerating.

2) What stunts can the car perform?
The car can do a flip if we accelerate greatly in one direction and then suddenly accelerate in the opposite direction as shown in the video below.

The car also has a dedicated “Cyclone mode” in which the car starts doing random stunts as shown in the video below.