RC cars
By Charles Clarke
Elementary Category (Grades 4-6)
Study | Engineering and Computer Science
This year’s question for me was “How does an RC controller send a signal to the car to move?”. First of all, an RC vehicle is a remote controlled or radio controlled toy that is controlled by a remote that you hold in your hands. They can be all sorts of vehicles including cars, helicopters, boats, planes and even blimps!
I found some answers from my own car. It is like a track for radio waves and electric pulses through both the controller and car. The course starts in the transmitter and ends in the receiver. When you press a trigger, an integrated circuit on the circuit board sends out a certain amount of electric pulses which makes its way through the controller and up and gets transferred through the air to the receiver.
The car receives the signal with the antenna that is connected to another circuit board with another integrated circuit which counts the pulses. But this one doesn’t send them, instead it sends electricity to the steering motor or the driving motor. The power source is batteries that give electricity. And that is where the track ends.
