CityCar Testing Platform

Team

Raul-David Poblano, William Lark, Jr., Charles Guan, Nicholas Pennycooke, and Ryan C.C. Chin

Project Brief

The CityCar Testing Platform is a full-scale and modular vehicle that consists of four independently controlled Wheel Robots, an extruded aluminum frame, battery pack, driver's interface, and seating for two. Each Wheel Robot is capable of over 120 degrees of steering freedom, thus giving the CityCar chassis omni-directional driving ability such as sideways parking, zero-radius turning, torque steering, and variable velocity (in each wheel) steering. This four-wheeler is an experimental platform for by-wire controls (non-mechanically coupled controls) for the Wheel Robots, thus allowing for the platform to be controlled by wireless joysticks. The four-wheeler also allows the CityCar design team to experiment with highly personalized body/cabin designs.

The CityCar project is continuing the vision of William J. Mitchell (1944 – 2010), director of the Smart Cities Media Lab research group. More information on the CityCar project can be found on the Smart Cities web site.