Project Summary

SATURN is a deterministic computer-based simulator for the operations of a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) network. The focus of this project is the design, coding and use of this simulator application to explore the concepts behind and reflect on the feasibility of PRT as a solution to some of the problems of public transportation in the 21st century.

To navigate within this project, use the Project Directory, at left (click here if you do not see it). The eight items will take you through the process of researching, designing, building and using SATURN. You may download the binaries, but a typical run of the program is provided so that you can still see the major features of SATURN, without downloading.

This site is designed to be used with an HTML 4.01-compatible browser such as Internet Explorer 6, at a resolution of at least 800x600. Much of the content in this site is in PDF format, so you will need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader to access it.

VSF 2003 Project Information

Grade 12
Team Size 1
Subject Area Engineering
Project Type Descriptive
Project Level Advanced
Project Format Traditional
Software Tools
    Web site Development
  • TextPad 4.2 - The best Windows text editor ever!
  • Adobe Photoshop 7
  • Adobe Acrobat 5
  • WinZip

    • Project Development
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 7
  • Dev-C++ 5
  • Microsoft Office 2000
  • OpenOffice.org 1.0
Hardware Tools (No special hardware was used. Development platform was a P4 1.60GHz (before overclocking, anyway) with 512MB RAM.)
Source of Idea PRT has existed for roughly 35 years, and has occasionally made headlines. In this case, I was talking with a friend, Anthony Berndt, who happened to mention a similar concept called 'SkyCars,' which, upon further research, turned out to be related to PRT. I decided to write a simulator application for PRT because it seemed like a challenging problem, and I felt that there was the potential to make a genuine contribution to the field.
Special Skills Notable technologies employed in this project include:
    Web site Development
  • HTML (4.01 + frames), CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Photoshop

    • Project Development
  • C++
  • Win32 GUI Programming
  • Resource Files
  • HTML (4.01 + frames), CSS
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
Project Morphology I first began work on this project in September, 2002. Since then, components have been entered under two school projects and two other science fairs, with some awards being won, as listed below.
  1. IB Extended Essay: A ~4000 word research paper titled, "An investigation into the feasibility of Small-Module Automated Rapid Transit using a quasi-synchronous control system." This was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of an IB diploma. It is available in PDF format in the Miscellaneous
    2. section.
  2. IB Dossier Project: Version 1.0.0 of SATURN was submitted with full documentation in April, 2003, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of an IB diploma. Elements of the analysis and design phases are reused (with modifications) in this project. The majority of the original dossier submission is available in the Miscellaneous
    3. section.
  3. Calgary Youth Science Fair (2003): Version 1.0.0 of SATURN (with a few minor presentation changes) was entered in my regional science fair (April, 2003). It received the following awards:
    1. Gold Medal
    2. Alberta Research Council Award
    3. Grassroots Environmental Stewardship Award (Runner Up)
    4. Plum Foundation scholarship for entrance to CWSF2003, below.
  4. Canada Wide Science Fair (2003): Version 1.1.0 of SATURN was entered in CWSF2003 (in Calgary (of all places...), May, 2003). It received the following award:
    1. Silver Medal: Senior Computing Science and Mathematics Division.
Current Submission This site is submitted in support of version 1.1.0 of SATURN to the 2003 Canada-Wide Virtual Science Fair (www.virtualsciencefair.com).

This site was developed with TextPad 4.2 (that is, in straight HTML) in compliance with W3C's HTML 4.01 and CSS 2.0 standards.