As part of the 2025 Ride Engineering Competition hosted at Ohio State University, our team from the Themed Entertainment Association @ Notre Dame designed and built a working model flat ride called "Abandon Ship!", competing against 20 top engineering schools from across the country.
Our ride followed ASTM F2291-24 standards and included:
- Risk assessments
- Factory and site acceptance tests (FAT/SAT)
- Service and maintenance plans
- Full mechanical and electrical schematics
- Custom control systems
I led the controls engineering effort for our three-motor system, overseeing:
- Electrical wiring and layout
- Stepper motor logic and motion control
- Emergency stop and fault handling
- Custom operator panel wiring and configuration
- Industrial-style programming using IEC 61131-3 Ladder Diagrams via OpenPLC
- Designed and built a complete control system using OpenPLC running on an Arduino Mega 2560
- Created a dual NPN MOSFET failsafe circuit: power flows only if both hardware (E-STOP) and software (Ladder Logic) conditions are satisfied
- Developed a full set of FAT/SAT test procedures (100+), simulating real-world commissioning of theme park attractions
- Implemented jogging, homing, auto sequence, and soft stop behaviors entirely in Ladder Logic, supported by an Arduino Extension file written in C++
Our team won 1st Place in Control Systems Design for our:
- Robust safety integration
- Use of an open-source industrial PLC platform
- Modular and maintainable ladder logic programming
- Real-world simulation of theme park control workflows
- OpenPLC (Ladder Diagram logic)
- Arduino Mega 2560 (as PLC runtime hardware)
- NPN MOSFETs for dual-fault-tolerant E-Stop enforcement
- Limit switches, stepper drivers, and manual control panel
- FastAccelStepper and AccelStepper libraries in Arduino Extension File
RECDemoDav.2.mp4
demo720.1.mp4
- Huge thank you to Thiago Alves for building and maintaining the OpenPLC platform — and for answering questions in the forum!
- Thank you to Charlie Wickham and the competition judges for organizing the event.
- And a massive shoutout to my teammates on TEA@ND for their hard work, creativity, and late nights!
