Interior door panels for future dirverless taxi with improved ingress and egress
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Product development (MPPDE), MSc
Publicerad
2019
Författare
Lakshmikanthan, Karthik
Sathyanarayana, Suhas
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
This report presents a master thesis project pursued at Volvo Car Corporations’ door
panels department, from January 2019 to October 2019. The thesis is about investigating
the market requirements, company expectations about the aesthetic and functional
elements of autonomous vehicles and development of a new concept door panel for
a future autonomous vehicle.
The autonomous vehicle project from Volvo Cars is intended for the taxi segment
and is developed in collaboration with its clients in U.S.A. Due to this, the client’s
requirements are also taken into consideration while designing the door panel. Being a
mass commute vehicle, the interior layout of the vehicle is planned in such a way that
it can accommodate the passengers without affecting their safety and privacy.
The most commonly included components in conventional door panels are waist rail,
arm rest, speaker, cup holder, lock/ unlock button and door handle. These components
are packed together on the door panel by considering packaging, safety and ergonomic
guidelines. For an autonomous vehicle in taxi segment, the driver seat is unnecessary
and being a taxi, the boot space is rendered moot. Volvo Cars took this opportunity
by changing the interior layout and the seats in the car to accommodate more passengers.
The need to come up with a new concept for a door panel is derived based on three
main reasons. Firstly, few components in the door panel that enable manual operation
of door functions were eliminated for the autonomous car project. Secondly, the need to
accommodate more passengers and automate the door functions requires a reduced door
panel width. Finally, to accommodate the difference in attitude of customers towards a
taxi car compared to a personally owned car and the expectations the future generation
has from an autonomous vehicle.
The product development process for the new door panel concept started with an
extensive market and customer research, both internally and outside Volvo Cars. The
process consisted of idea generation based on market research, ergonomic and safety
considerations, followed by various stringent filtering process to find the right concepts
for the door panel. Finally the concepts was realised in 3D, by modelling it in Alias and
then building the mechanical design in Catia V5. Volvo Cars’ design and manufacturing
guidelines were considered throughout the detailed design phase to realise the concept.
During the course of this thesis, the autonomous vehicle project was put on hold
until December 2019. Hence this report and the final door panel concepts developed
through the thesis serve as the end product according to the available inputs and market
data. But when the autonomous vehicle project is resumed again in Volvo Cars, the
outcome of this thesis will serve as a base tool to understand the requirements for the
components and help the Research & Development team in making better judgements
while developing the actual door panel for the project.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
autonomous car, door panel, taxi, interior, ergonomics, safety, Catia, Alias , Volvo Cars