Interior door panels for future dirverless taxi with improved ingress and egress

Abstract

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.