AT M OS 4WD FI X ING Written by Kavindu Ratnayake Photo by Kavindu Ratnayake
During the competition season this past summer the team ran into trouble with the front-left motor, which refused to spin. Unable to diagnose the problem in time it was decided to cut the connection to the two front motors and just use rear-wheel drive. This obviously reduced the performance of the car significantly. Since the Mechatronics group is responsible for fixing the driverless car our highest priority task was set: to get Atmos driving on all four motors again. The first step was to test both front motors. With the help of some more experienced Revolve members we were able to connect each of the motors to a separate motor controller and inverter. Using these we could check if the motors responded any input from the inverter. The front-right motor spun as expected while the front-left gave no response. Checking the phases on the motor with a multimeter showed a very high resistance between two of the phases. We concluded that there must be a broken connection inside the motor itself and that the only solution was to replace it.
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