Parts

We're thinking about how to put together each of our cars. We looked at hobby car kits, but they come ready to assemble and are pretty expensive. Now we're looking at using K'Nex to build our car bodies. Hopefully, K'Nex won't end up being too expensive, and it will allow us to easily change the design of the cars to fit components inside.
Our biggest problem with the car body is going to be the chassis. We need something strong that also allows for steering. We can either get someone in MEAM to help us build something or we can buy a chassis.
Buggy Car Chassis Kit: http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H2020.html
Pololu 3pi robot http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/975
Boe Bot http://www.parallax.com/tabid/411/Default.aspx
We already have Boe Bots, but they run on servo motors and are very slow, so we'd need new DC motors for those

For our joystick, we're going to use potentiometer joysticks.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9032

For the starting and ending gates, were going to need LEDs, which we can find in the lab.

each car will sense when it crosses the finish line, and send that information to the finishing gate to be displayed. The cars will sense when they enter the dark of the finishing gate/garage with light sensors/photoresistors, which we can find in the lab.