This project has been made by students of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at AGH University of Science nad Technology. It's a LEGO build that uses LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO Technic pieces. Car is able to freely move forward and backward, turn, and adjust it's height both on demand as well as automatically. Our project was inspired by Buggy offroad vehicles.
We use 8 dampers on swingarms in order to keep the level of the vehicle, allow it for some elasticity and adaptability while driving around. Ultrasonic distance sensor helps us to detect incoming obstacles, which force the car into and immediate stop, while gyroscope mounted on the back of the car detects any disturbances on the road, which prompt the autonomous heightening of the suspension.
Main power engine is connected to both frontal and rear shafts, both with differential mechanism that don't allow for sliding of the wheels while turning and make sure the car isn't left without any power in case one of them get's stuck.
We turn using linear rack, which transforms rotational speed into linear speed, which is then transfered to the wheels by swingarms. This solution allows us to keep ackermann steering geometry, and possibly adjust the angle of the turn to our needs.
Adjusting the height of the car is done by two motors working in synchronisation that rotate the axes to which dampers are connected. This pulls the swingarms upwards or pushes them downwards in order to lower or heighten the suspension.
In our project we used Husarion ROBOCORE v1.0 to program and synchronise all the motors with the sensors. By connecting a Bluetooth module to ROBOCORE we were able to manipulate the car via an Android App.