Active suspension car

[Buddsy 1,456 1 Vehicles]

Its easy to control via a PLC I would think. There are plenty of experts and software to write to PLC. 

I got good friends at

http://www.pandrhydraulics.com/ who Imsure could recomend someone or else I never used them but someone like this should be able to help.

http://www.hydraulics.uk.com/projects.php

Buddsy

 

[Clive59 90]

Sounds easy in principal, and yes, driving all the 'bits' would be relative childsplay, but doing it so it works properly not so easy. Creating a map of responses to all possible conditions from scratch would be an immense project, man-years of work probably. The power of a RaspberryPi is more than enough probably, but you would need a proper Real Time Operating System, not Linux. So probably a dedicated multi-processor design, with very tight guaranteed real time response. Not a trivial project, but possible. Does sound like fun though...

 

[Stuart Monument 765]

Are there any ex lotus employees on here , who know a bit more about the computing side of the system ? 

[Bazza 907 772]

I think SID has recently been sold

[Barrykearley 5,368]

Was sat in Paul Mattys back in Feb.

wasnt there last month though

[ramjet 943]

10 hours ago, Clive59 said:

Sounds easy in principal, and yes, driving all the 'bits' would be relative childsplay, but doing it so it works properly not so easy. Creating a map of responses to all possible conditions from scratch would be an immense project, man-years of work probably. The power of a RaspberryPi is more than enough probably, but you would need a proper Real Time Operating System, not Linux. So probably a dedicated multi-processor design, with very tight guaranteed real time response. Not a trivial project, but possible. Does sound like fun though...

 

Wouldn't Lotus still have the program that monitors and adjusts things? You wouldn't think that something that was such an advantage was turfed out? Maybe at the time the ROI could not be justified?

From what you can see on the video, isn't it just a matter of sending the opposite amount of lift/droop to a corner dependent on what the transducer says that corner has moved by?

[JayEmm 1,270]

You're talking about the company who wanted to bin the VARI moulds for the Esprit, until @Bibs etc... saved them

There is a guy who comes to the Norfolk meeting who is an ex-Lotus electrics guy. I think he might be a bit young for the project, but I can ask him about it next time I see him.

I did ask a few people why the system never got implemented in any production cars, apparently the cost was fairly astronomical and there weren't any ways of making it cheap enough

[Buddsy 1,456 1 Vehicles]

31 minutes ago, JayEmm said:

You're talking about the company who wanted to bin the VARI moulds for the Esprit, until @Bibs etc... saved them

You're talking about the company who binned the Motorsport Dept & The Driving Academy! 

 

Buddsy

[Barrykearley 5,368]

I'd hamper a guess it would be much more cost effective to do now.

the strain gauge things used to cost an absolute fortune - now they are buttons. The worlds moved on - and what was specialist is now just the norm

[Stuart Monument 765]

I suppose it's 30 year old technology now, just look what's happened in the last 100 years. Strain gauges would be chassis mounted or on the uprights ? 

[skiing 71 1 Vehicles]

I think it would be incredibly cool to have an esprit with active suspension.  I think the suspension manufacturers are getting to the point where you will be able to buy kits but no-one has quite got there yet. 

[march 581 1 Vehicles]

If I remember correctly, wasn't there some development of active suspension using solid state gyro's. I only remember this as in my first job the company I was working for was looking at them for missile guidance systems and it became a bit of a hot topic around the coffee machine.