For my senior capstone, I was part of a team of six mechanical engineering students to improve a hard-connect towbar system for semi-truck platooning.
Motivation#
The project was part of a larger effort to explore the hardware and control aspects of semi-autonomous truck platoons. In a truck platoon, the lead truck has a driver, while following trucks rely on physical or software coupling to coordinate movement.
Our approach used a compliant towbar between the lead and follower vehicles to physically transfer position information from the lead vehicle to the follower. The first version of this design, created by a previous senior design team, was massively overbuilt for the expected loads and only allowed compliance in compression.
Previous Design#
Initial Prototypes#
We spent a majority of the year looking into a collapsable ratcheting system. It showed promise but had serious safety concerns. With three months left we abandoned that radical idea to improve the existing design.
Final Design Goals#
My Role at this point was coordinating my teamembers in various subteams. I worked with our main point of contact on the redesign to determine simple design goals we could hit by the end of the semester.
We sought to introduce bi-directional compliance, add an extension system to simplify loading, and lighten the overall weight of the towbar.
I separated the team into two groups, one to work on the front extension system (left in the below picture) and another to repurpose the springs from the old design into a geometry that allowed the two way compliance (right). By dividing the work amoungst the team and letting them have individual ownership of the project I focused on assisting each as needed and handling part procurement and finding a space to build.
With this strategy we took this design from CAD-pavement in a little over a month while in the middle of senior year classes.
Results and Recognition#
Our work earned first prize in the Fall 2021 Engineering Project Showcase where we took home a cash prize.
The prototype proved robust enough to continue testing even after our team graduated. You can read more about the related company and its work in this article.