On Monday, August 6 at 1:31 a.m. EDT, NASA will attempt the landing of a new planetary rover, named Curiosity, on the surface of Mars.  The Mars Science Laboratory project is managed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, a world-renowned center for robotic space exploration and advanced science and engineering.  JPL recently began a widespread adoption of Maplesoft technology, and Maplesoft’s products are expected to help JPL save...

Recently, we were asked by a designer of thrill rides if we could help them define a design tool that would allow them to push the envelope in rider experience, while considering engineering constraints and, of course, rider safety.

At the recent Vehicle Dynamics Expo in Stuttgart, I presented an example that demonstrates the speed with which you can perform the complete model-development-to-HIL process for a vehicle stability controller using MapleSim. The process begins with the development of a full-chassis vehicle model in MapleSim. This is a detailed model that includes the geometries for a double-wishbone suspension at the front and semi-trailing arms at the rear, with Fiala models for the tires. The stability controller, or Electronic Stability Program (ESP), is a predictive model based on a simplified vehicle model (referred to as the “bicycle model” since it only uses one wheel at the front and rear). When activated, the controller estimates what the desired yaw rate should be from the simple model, compares this with the actual yaw rate, and applies a braking force proportional to the difference to the appropriate front tire.

Last week was rather crazy…

Monday afternoon, I’m sitting in a canoe on a beautiful lake in the wilds of Ontario…

…Tuesday morning, I’m in Stuttgart for the Vehicle Dynamics Expo to introduce MapleSim 2 to the many automotive engineers that have converged from just about every European nation, and beyond, to learn about new technologies and methodologies for the design of vehicle chassis systems, including  suspensions, steering, tires (or tyres, depending where you come from), and braking systems. One hot topic of discussion is the rapid development of vehicle stability controllers, given that all new passenger vehicle designs must now by law include active stability control. This is very timely for us because we are able to show our hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) demonstration that includes a full-vehicle model developed in MapleSim and running on dSPACE and National Instruments PXI real-time platforms, with a MotoTron prototype controller interfaced to the vehicle model via a CANbus interface. I’ll describe this in more detail in a later blog post.