It's similar to what the Fighting Pi did - run the motor with a load on it, and see what happens. While they used a window motor (I think), we're running ours with a CIM motor, and we're applying a load by coupling that to another CIM motor that's hooked up to a Victor in break mode.
We also have the option of directly copying their method of providing a load with an existing robot we have setup to run a RS550 through a clutch to power a rollbar. Maybe in a future version of the paper, to help analyze the validity of each approach.
We probably won't have enough time to set up for speed measurements this season, so we'll only have Voltage here in V1 of the paper. Ideally, we'd also like to test the other functions of the speed controllers, like the break function on each to see if there are any significant differences (assumption: no, the break modes are close enough to identical for each one). It would be nice to include some tests analyzing the performance of closed loop feedback with the Jaguars running CAN versus PWM and running the sensors into the DSC.
As you can see, we're giving ourselves room to grow and build onto this white paper
Unfortunately, not all of us have access to a dynamometer to do the testing with, although my students did ask if I could find one for them!
While we're talking about this though, a question to pose to the group. We got through most of the tests last night, but the Jaguar was giving us trouble. The status LED indicated it was getting a signal just fine (it stopped flashing and turned solid orange), but it wasn't doing what the code was telling it to do - the motor never moved. We scoped the PWM signal, and everything looked correct there... we tried replacing the Jag with another one we know worked, and hooked it into the BDC-COMM application to see what the Jaguar was "thinking"... any ideas?