Khitchdee Design

Projects

1. A lightweight bicycle-trailer design

A steel-tube chassis attaches to the bicycle's rear-wheel hub. This chassis rests on a narrow axle, placed just behind the bicycle's rear-wheel. The axle rolls on 2 pairs of small bicycle-wheels. This axle is steerable via a mechanical coupling with the steering system of the bicycle's front-wheel.

The chassis adds stability and shock-absorption to the riding characteristics of the bicycle, without reducing maneoverability. A cargo-carrying frame can be added on top of this chassis and attached to the bicycle-frame's seat-post corner.

The trailer adds only 70cm to the length of the bicycle, hence the turning radius of the bicycle + trailer is similar to that of the bicycle alone.

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2. A tool for specifying a land-vehicle design

This tool, codenamed The Specifier, is an alternative to Solidworks for the structural and construction-process specification of a land-vehicle design.

It is an improvement over Solidworks for structural land-vehicle design via 1) a much simpler user-interface, 2) a specially designed virtual protractor for accurately measuring or specifying the angles in a design and 3) a narrow domain focus -- land-vehicle design specification.

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3. A far simpler app-UI design framework for mutiple form-factor devices.

This app-UI design framework is based on a new, temporal approach to UI representation, that makes it a lot simpler to design app-UIs across device form-factors and hardware UI capabilities.

It's benefits in app-UI development are:

1) Native interfaces to device hardware capabilities, 2) Device-consistent app-deployment and 3) UI-consistency across devices.

These features make it useful for developing high-value or mission-critical apps such as enterprise apps.

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Planned Projects

1. A sub-compact car

This design could be based on a Honda Brio chassis.

It could use the drivetrain if available (1.2L VTEC petrol, 5-speed, FWD).

It has about the same wheelbase.

The construction will be body-on-frame and not monocoque.

Glass panels will be used in the roof for both front and rear sections.

The roof design flows air through the car,

with the possibility of adding an air-conditioning system at the air-inlets.

A center mounted steering-system is planned with the driver sitting in the center of the front cabin, and not to one side (much like a 3-wheeled vehicle).

The target is efficient ergonomics, good handling and easy maintenance.

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2. A gearless, lightweight motorcycle

This design is based on a 100cc moped (gearless lightweight motrocyle) design (shown above) that weighs about 90kg. The engine is petrol-based and provides a mileage of 60 km/L.

The planned design will only use the drive-train of this existing design and target a similar weight.

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Domain Analysis

Structural land-vehicle design

In terms of structural design, land-vehicles can be categorised into 4 classes -- automobiles (4 wheels), motorcyles and scooters (2 wheels), bicycles (2 wheels) and 3-wheelers.

Automotive

Large established manufactuers have a basic structural design that has been developed and refined over several decades.

Minor changes are made to this structure, which is primarily the chassis (e.g. BMW CLAR, VW MQB. Merecdes MFA).

Since production happens at very large scale in assembly-line factories, a single design is made for each usage class, and the design is done in-house, over several years, linked to a production process.

Motorcycles

The design state-of-the-art is similar to automotive (e.g. Cradle, Diamond, Backbone frame types). The number of chassis designs is a lot larger and design revisions happen

twice as frequently as automotive.

Usage classes are based on engine size and weight.

There is more outsourcing of the design process, and smaller designers can exist, since a new design is a lot cheaper to protoype.

Bicycles

A bicycle is designed as a bicycle-frame only, by a an established brand (e.g. Diamond, Step-through, Cantilever frame types).

All other components that go into a finished bicycle are designed by specialised component manufacturers, such as

wheels and tires,

gear-shifting mechanisms,

brakes,

drivetrain components such as chain-cranks, chains and freewheels,

and shock-absorption systems.

Usage classes are based on terrain, targeted speed, loading level etc.

Of late, DC-motor based drivetrain assist sys

3-Wheelers

Motorised 3-wheelers are commonly produced industrially for cheap and traffic-efficient transportation (cargo and to a lesser extent passenger taxis).

This is a recent class of land-vehicles and only a few designs exist.

Tricycles, are very cheap to protoype. A handful of companies design and produce several such designs at very small scale.

In recent years, DC-motor powered cargo-trailers have also been designed

as bicycle add-ons, and have operational characteristics similar

to tricycles.

App-UI Design Tools

This industry started out as an in-house vertical industry with device manufacturers, in conjunction with OS vendors providing app development tools, which include app-UI design tools. With the proliferation of device form-factors, the industry got a lot more complicated.