Design team members: Gord Cook, Barnaby Godley
Supervisor: Prof. Fraser
Background
How do you stop a car when the driver does not co-operate? Police are regularly faced with this problem. High-speed car chases are dangerous, often resulting in damage to public property, injuries to innocent people and the loss of lives. Placing spikes on the road in front of a vehicle is not always an option and not guaranteed to stop a vehicle since it can continue to travel on flat tires. There is no effective way to stop fleeing vehicles without expensive damage, injuries, lost lives or the endangerment of police officers.
The need for a solution is apparent when considering that, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the annual US national death toll from high-speed chases averages 300 victims. Police are forced to make a split second decision involving life and death. The risk of law suits against police departments places officers in a no-win situation; whether or not they chase, there are those who oppose their actions.
Project description
The main objective is to show that an EMP weapon capable of disabling a vehicle’s electrical system from a minimum distance of 50 metres. But upon further research the voltages generated by such a device (200 000+ V) can be lethal. Since our group has no experience in handling large voltages our design will be a lower-powered EMP device that can disable a computer from within a few feet. This should lay the groundwork for a future EMP weapon that would have the effective range.
Providing an optimum solution to the problem will involve determining the operating frequencies of the target computer for optimal disruption, antenna and wave propagation theory and design.
Design methodology
By using research and end-user feedback, analyzing the problem, brainstorming ideas, criteria and constraints were established through an iterative process based on sound systems design principles. The ideas generated were evaluated against the criteria and constraints to select the most promising solutions. These selected solutions were then examined in more detail based on aditional research and end-user feedback. The determination of the final solution was based upon the analyses from the previous step in combination with a qualitative factor. The final solution chosen was the EMP device. Initial reserach into EMP devices have yielded positive results. Now that the solution has been chosen, the next steps are to continue the research started on the EMP devices and vehicle electrical systems, and to design a prototype to implement and to test.