SMART CAR SYSTEMS DESIGN

In recent years, commuting time has increased as people secure jobs far away from where they live.In many cases, people live in the suburban areas and use their personal vehicles to commute to the cities where professional jobs are abundant.An average one way commuting time is about 30 minutes and can vary depending on road conditions and number of vehicles.Drivers would prefer to use their commuting time wisely by working, sleep, read, talk, playing games and many other non driving activities.Smart car has been speculated as one way to reduce and possibly eliminate driver functions during commuting.The purpose of this design project was to develop a Smart Car (SC) vehicle system which would be integrated into a 2009 Honda Civic and shall enable the vehicle to be operated in a preexisting Modified HOV Lane System with little to no user intervention.Smart car project was divided into three major parts namely conceptual design, detail design and system integration or final production.The presentation will focus on the conceptual design which explores different options available to implement driverless car.The conceptual design is expected to find best ways to enable the vehicle to attain a maximum speed of 85 miles per hour safely and efficiently.The team that was responsible for the smart car project was comprised of three graduate students from Penn State Great Valley, Malvern, PA.During conceptual design, two major parts were explored.The actual mechanical portion (2009 Honda Civic) and the smart car kit (a collection of mechanical, electrical, hardware and software).The smart car kit will be installed in the vehicle and would enable it to use modified HOV lane as a smart car.The team was able to complete a conceptual design which included a number of subsystem components tradeoff studies and an operational scenario.At the end of the conceptual design, the team presented its work to the stake holders who were responsible to approve the design and appropriate funds needed to proceed to a detail design.