Controlling a Car with the cRio

[Kevin Sevcik]

A remote control car without a fail-safe braking system and igition kill switch? You're right, that's brilliant! What could possibly go wrong?

Oh right. You could end up with a one or more ton vehicle driving away from you, pedal to the floor, with nothing to stop it but the nearest tree, wall, car, or pedestrian. Well, not the last one, that'd barely slow the car down.

Honestly, pretending to tell people how to do this without explaining the numerous things you need to think about to avoid killing yourself is shockingly irresponsible. And I'm seriously doubting they're capable of telling anyone how to do that safely since they seem to have failed to "engineer" a brake control system that would safely halt the car if they ever lost communications with it. Unless they running a highly modified control system there, those window motors are going to sit there doing nothing once the cRIO loses comms. Or power.

So in summary, this is a horrible idea for the vast majority of teams to try unless they're supervised by an experienced engineer who's actually thought about all the many many ways this could end badly.