Jacob Dynamics Meeting 8/31/2024 (Steering)

This meeting is being recorded on Harshit’s iPad and will be posted later.

Evan:

• Perfect Ackerman Setup: steering rack moves with the tie rods

• For an asymmetric design: steering arm goes directly into one wheel and

• Potentially no front double wishbone suspension and use instead a leading arm suspension setup. (90 degree turned double wishbone)

• If we go with a traditional Ackerman setup we already have a good model for it.

• Steering Optimization

  • Reduce RMS (root mean square) error

  • Certain corner radii appear more often

  • Multiply error function by corner frequency function resulting in a weighted distribution to optimize Ackerman around

  • Modular steering system for different track layouts

    • Requires modular code

  • Minimize bump steer

  • Get rid of steering slop

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Harshit:

• Perfect Ackerman leads to ideal Ackerman steering

• Perfect Ackerman steering allows for the entire rack to pivot and removes a join whereas the one we’re used to running has an extra joint but the rack doesn’t pivot

• Perfect Ackerman steering is more like a trapezoid which then allows for you to get the correct ratio when turning to be able to get Ackerman

• Leading arm suspension is thinner but it wouldn’t matter if we run external suspension

• Steering Optimization:

  • Reducing the error between inner and outer wheel steering – optimizing Ackerman across all degrees to get the exact ratio that changes per angle

• If steering runs out of tasks then steering can map out track and reduce the error across those values from perfect Ackerman on those turns

• 3 Big Things in VDYN

  • Camber – Ideally neutral camber according to Robert Horvath

  • Caster

  • Toe

• To reduce steering slop you just need better fixtures to make sure that you minimize slop

• Suspension neutral 4 bar means neutral camber gain