After describing the development of the ISDV, this thesis studies the energy management which can improve the energy efficiency. It is shown that the traditional electric vehicle (EV) is not capable of managing the energy required for one driving cycle because it has only a single traction motor. This thesis proposes and examines a new way to manage electrical energy in which torque is distributed among different in-wheel motors to achieve a higher level of overall energy efficiency, which has been enhanced and demonstrated in various driving cycles. / Thereafter, the thesis studies two aspects of benefits the ISDV can bring to parking. One is in space efficiency, defined as the ratio of the total space occupied by the vehicle in its final parked state over the whole area covered by the parking lot. Comparison of the ISDV and traditional vehicles in parking proves that the ISDV afford a higher level of space efficiency. The other aspect is the parking time. It is tested experimentally in the hardware-in-loop (HIL) system, and the motions of traditional vehicles, the zero radius turning motion, and the free motion of the ISDV are compared. The less time for parking demonstrates the easiness to steer the ISDV. / Throughout the history of human civilization, vehicles have played a significant role by connecting people in various locations. They have thus boosted the progress of civilization and made our lives more convenient. However, as the number of vehicles on the road has increased, the convenience, which vehicles provide, has gradually turned into inconvenience in three respects: 1) the energy consumed by vehicles accounts for a large proportion of total energy consumption, which is in an ever-increasing trend; 2) more parking space is needed, a significant proportion of which is not for parking itself but for enabling the vehicle to be navigated to its final parking slot; 3) the effort required to park a car is also troublesome, causing the driver to spend much more time in a crowded parking lot. / To alleviate these three problems, I develop a methodology to design an independent steering and driving vehicle (ISDV). It brings together the robotic technologies of steer-by-wire, drive-by-wire, four-wheel-independent-steering, and four-wheel-independent-driving. All four wheels of the ISDV can be steered independently, so that vehicle rotation and translation can be decoupled from each other. Omni-directional motions such as zero radius turning (ZRT) and lateral parking (LP) are realized, thereby enhancing the agility of the vehicle. In contrast with omni-directional wheeled mobile robots, this vehicle is targeted at serving as a human carrier or even as a vehicle carrier in the future. / Qian, Huihuan. / Adviser: Yangsheng Xu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-159). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Typescript (photocopy) / x, 372 leaves : ill. (part col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1981

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-164). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Vehicle suspension optimisation is a complex and difficult task, as there are a variety of factors influencing the dynamic performance of a vehicle. During suspension development, the optimisation of a selected few of these factors is often to the detriment of others, as they are all inter-related. In addition, expertise in vehicle setup and suspension tuning is scarce, and is limited to experienced racing teams and large automotive manufacturers with extensive research and development capabilities. The motivation for this research was therefore to provide objective and user-friendly methodologies for vehicle suspension optimisation, in order to support student projects like Formula Student, while having relevance to the needs of the South African automotive industry and racing community. With the onset of digital data acquisition, it has become feasible to take real-time measurements of tyre temperatures, to provide information on how a tyre is performing at a specific point on the track. Measuring the tyre surface temperature can provide a useful indication on whether the tyre is loaded equally or not, and what suspension adjustments should be made to improve tyre load distribution.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

No description available.

The thesis is a historical study of the first twenty years of the British motor cycle industry in terms of the development of its product. The main theoretical issue is standardization, not in its usual sense as a forma l activity aimed at the setting up of standards, but as a trend the effect of which is for products to become more and more alike across the industry as a whole. Standardization in this sense is to a large extent an unintended consequence of the wish on the part of producers to design products which operate more efficiently, which can be produced more cheaply, and which have the widest possible appeal in the marketplace; and of the preference, on the part of the majority of consumers, for products which are familiar and of known reputation and performance, as against those which are new and untried. The trend to standardization is analysed into its main components , functional efficiency, production efficiency, and marketing efficiency, and these are used as the basis of a number of propositions which make it possible to consider in more depth the development of the product during the three phases of industry development : experimental, developmental, and standardization . The more substantive chapters of the thesis are organized around three main themes, the development of the industry as a whole, and the development of the product from a technical point of view, and from a consumer point of view. The main conclusion is that the development of its product into a standard form--one on which newcomers to the industry can base their own products and which consumers can recognise as reliable and worthy of purchase-is the most critical stage in the development and consolidation of a new industry.

Over the past three decades unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have seen significant development with a current focus on automation. The main area of development that is pushing automation is that of path planning allowing a UAV to generate its own path information that it can then follow to carry out its mission. Little work however has been carried out on transfer path planning. This work attempts to address this shortcoming by developing optimal algorithms for a path planning task to move on to a circular flightpath to carry out a target tracking mission. The work is developed in three main sections. Firstly the transfer algorithm itself is derived including gradient analysis for the cost function being applied, adaptation of this cost function into two separate minimising actions and analysis of a cost function issue that introduces a separation distance constraint. The algorithm is tested proving correct constraint activation and cost selection. The second part of this work looks at validating the results of the transfer algorithm against the Dubin's car result and a receding horizon approach when applied to the transfer operation. Utilising the cost results from the transfer algorithm an efficiency analysis against the equivalent costs from the other methods is carried out. Lastly this work looks at the comparison between the developed transfer algorithm and a more flexible transfer approach by developing a new cost function form. A switching cost function is introduced where environmental parameters from the target tracking mission (i.e target position and velocity) are used to switch between a number of applicable cost functions (time minimal, distance minimal and minimum speed transfer). An analysis is carried out to investigate the performance of both the original algorithm and the newly developed switching function based on key target tracking parameters.

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) have emerged as a new systems and the most promising fields for research and development of wireless network. As the popularity of mobile device and wireless networks significantly increased over the past years, MANET has now become one of the most vibrant and active field of communication and networks. Due to severe challenges such as the open medium, unpredicted mobility of mobile nodes, distributed and cooperative communication and inherently constrained capabilities, which manifest exhaustible sources of power. Due to the increasing demand for high-speed data services, the limited and high cost of licensed, and the future MANETs are expected to be operating at frequencies greater than 2 GHz and most of the research work in the area has been done in the frequency range of 1-2 GHz. In this thesis, a power conservation model is proposed. The proposed model is based on the conventional on-demand ad hoc routing protocols with the addition of a power model without incurring additional complexity on the existing MANET characteristics. The mobile nodes are able to computes their power their power status adaptively to decide if they are fit for packet forwarding and reception. The research illustrates the power conserving behaviour of the new technique using an analytical approach and also by computer simulations. The results have shown that power savings of more than 15% were achieved with not much delay in the network. The performance of the routing protocols in the presence of ambient noise in the network was analyzed as well as the sensitivity of MAANETs at a carrier frequencies above 2 GHz using the free space and two slope path loss model. Results show that at carrier frequency greater than 2 GHz the break point distance affects the throughput performance of the network, whilst at frequency less than 2 GHz, the throughput performance for the free space and two slope model was the same.