Week 5 (9/21-9/28)

For my personal blog for the week of September 21 - September 28, I went to the public launch of the Paseo Public Prototyping Challenge and Festival on Wednesday, September 21is at the Hammer Theater Center in Downtown San Jose. In this event I was able to listen to speakers basically from all over Silicon Valley and give their stance on innovation. From the many speakers I heard, only a couple phrases stuck with me, such as the one where the speaker basically says everywhere else in the world, doesn't need you, but San Jose needs you. So as an SJSU student my priority is innovating the city of San Jose first, before any other city and the Spartan Superway allows me to just do that. Another thing that stuck with me, that basically every speaker touched on is what's next? They all talked about how can we make San Jose better or what's a solution to all the problems caused by traffic.

Ultimately, this was an inspiring event which will motivate me even more to try my best in the Spartan Superway project to actually get something working. Below is a picture of me right before the event started.

Week 4

For the week of September 14 - September 21 I did some research on some active suspension articles that I was able to obtain through the Martin Luther King Jr. Library web page. I wanted to look at professional articles to see how they approach designing an active suspension. Even though these articles are for four wheel vehicles, I can still take some of their ideas and apply it to the active suspension of the pod car. Most of these articles displayed there controls schematic on how they plan to utilize the active suspension and along with all of their calculations. One interesting concept I got from these articles is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows how everything is applied and it seems like it is working perfectly fine for them. So if I can some how take some parts such as their suspension system setup and be able to apply it to the pod car of the spartan super way, then our design process can go a lot smoother.

The links for the articles:
-http://discover.sjlibrary.org:50080/ebsco-w-b/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=71d2a00f-c7d9-4791-8709-f33db669ad47%40sessionmgr104&vid=1&hid=128
-http://discover.sjlibrary.org:50080/ebsco-w-a/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=27063e12-71b6-42a2-bed3-b1a59116031f%40sessionmgr4009&vid=1&hid=4201
-http://discover.sjlibrary.org:50080/ebsco-w-b/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=2528cf4d-cbe1-42e3-ad32-6e2122b30bf9%40sessionmgr101&vid=1&hid=128

Week 3

For the week of September 7 - September 14, my partner and I are in the beginning stages of designing the active suspension. We each come up with ideas and then we critique them to come up with the best overall and cost effective design. For example, a potential idea was using a scissor lift as a way to level the car. This is necessary when the car is held by springs because once a certain amount of weight enters the car it will create a displacement in the springs which will cause the car to be lower than what it is supposed to be. If the car is significantly lowered, it will not align with the platform resulting in unsafe loading and unloading for the passengers. This is why a leveling system is necessary if the car is hanging from springs. Although if we have the springs/shock absorbers in the horizontal position rather than the car hanging for it, then would it be necessary to add the self-leveling system to the bogie? As engineers currency is always a huge concern, so if there is any opportunity to save money without sacrificing the quality of the bogie, then that would be a huge plus for us. My partner and I are still deciding whether or not to spend the money to get a leveling system, which ultimately depends on the final design we choose.