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Electromagnetic Suspension System
chuckgrosvenor writes "Every automotive suspension has two goals: passenger comfort and vehicle control. Unfortunately, these goals are in conflict. Two much comfort, and the car rolls and pitches a lot, too much control and you feel every bump. BOSE has found the happy medium by using electromagnetic motors, power amplifiers, & computer control algorithms to even out the road, while still feeling connected to it. Check the quicktime movies to see two different cars stay level while they go through cornering exercises." Reader gatekeep writes "Amar Bose, founder of the Bose Corporation and MIT professor and alumnus, has recently unveiled a new electromagnetic car suspension system. It's said to have taken 24 years to develop. There's only minor technical details available so far, but the author of this piece describes seeing the system allow the test vehicle to jump over obstacles in its path!"
Despite how critical I am of developments like this, I have to say that those videos and the pictures are amazing. This technology could actually be implemented, it seems ready by the look and tone of the article, and thats pretty rare on Slashdot. Most newer technologies featured on /. always seems unlikely and full of holes, but this one seems a lot more solid.
Like the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I'd say the video more like a million. And those pictures show quite a bit. Plus the over-exposed headlights picture is a pretty cool way to demonstrate within a picture. But of course the video shows it all. And i think its amazing.
Just my two cents.
$> man woman
$> Segmentation fault (core dumped)
the rest of Bose things it will probably come WAY overpriced.
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... one could route the bass frequency from one's car stereo into the suspension to get that extra bass feel?
:D
It would sure beat doing the brake-gas tap dance to headbang in sequence with the music while driving
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Allow me to rant for a moment...
I find that just about all products, and automabiles especially, are getting excessively complicated, needlessly...
My current car for instance... The shoulder belt is electronically moved into place when the door is closed, and forward when the door is opened. Since I have to fasten my lap belt anyhow, this doesn't make life one bit easier for me, yet, the sensor goes out, the motor goes out, and either I'm paying shitloads of money to get replacement parts to fix the damn thing, or I'm welding it in-place, and then manually unhooking two seatbelts... Piece of junk. Meanwhile, basic, old-fashioned 3-point seatbelts work better.
These days, cars are mechanically more sound than they were previously, but electronicly less sound. Cars used to overheat because of serious problems... Now they overheat because the $5 sensor (that costs $200 to have replaced) went out, and the electric fan didn't kick on when things were getting too hot... Meanwhile, a mechnical fan, connected to the engine shaft, would have worked just as well, never failed, and would have been cheaper.
Maybe I am just (slightly) paranoid, but it seems as if manufacturers are making things needlessly complex intentionally so that they can sell more cars, or get more money on repairs. Something like airbags I can understand, but 99+% of this high-tech junk is no better than the low-tech solution, and is more prone to failure, and need replairs.
Well, even if it's not intentional, I want no part of it, because facts are facts, and the more high-tech, the more problems there will be.
Getting this back to the topic, I'm sure this new technology is an impressive improvement, but dammed if I want it. Truck drivers might stand to benefit from it, considering their unique situation, but with a car or a truck, the roughness of the ride is a very important indicator of how much damage you are doing to your vehicle.
If their intention is really to allow you to haul heavy-loads, while cushioning small bumps, why aren't they doing it the low-tech way? There are plenty of spring designs that could be used that would make the ride very smooth when there is no load, yet maintain the strength when loaded. You wouldn't get the benefit from it when loaded, however, when a truck is heavily loaded, you normally don't feel the small bumps anyhow... It's only when they are emtpy that the firm springs result in a rough-ride.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Mercedes already offer a comperable system on the 2004 SL, CL, and S class. This has been availble in the CL since the 2000 model year. This page is pure Flash, but it describes the system. http://www.mbusa.com/media/richmedia/main/models/t ech_demos/abc/abc.swf
IANCE (Chassis Engineer), but I have an interest in suspension systems as applied to motor racing. The suspension in the vehicle depicted as having a "conventional" system a very poor choice for comparision since it appears to be a medicore suspension system at best. A conventional suspension system with stiffer springs, anti-roll bars, and better dampers would perform drastically better under those types of conditions.
The vehicle pictured appears to be a Lexus LS400, which of course is a luxury barge that sacrifices handling for comfort. I realise Bose is claiming you can have your cake and eat it too - but I'd like to see a more valid comparision before drawing any conclusions - for example, a comparision with a BMW 5-series
This system looks like it would be quite heavy - and I bet you need extra batteries to provide adequate current too. Another question is how much heat the system generates, and how well it performs when hot (any electrical engineers care to comment on that?)
Bad idea. No shell script can ever hope to compete with a properly experienced crew chief. Look at pros like F1 teams, where they have all of the wizbang gadgetry you could ever want (telemetry is cool!), and they still have crew chiefs. I could see this being useful for limited applications in a very amateur setting, but anything more serious would require a crew chief with knowledge.
Worse idea. The last thing you want to be doing during a race is making adjustments on the fly like that. Ignoring the logistics of how you'd do it (limited mobility within a cockpit, even of a touring car), trying to decide if you need to dial up two volts or three, or if you should be dialing down, or if you even have the right dial is not a good idea. If you have time to do anything more than glance at your tach (and often, you shouldn't even need that, instead trusting engine sound to tell you when to shift), you're not driving fast enough. This will not make you more competitive, and will add quite a few more possible points of failure.
What is optimal handling? Such a system would need a very configurable interface, because no two drivers prefer the same setup. You may like a car that "pushes" (or "understeers", as we non-NASCAR fans like to say), while I may like a car that's "loose" (or "oversteers"). Guess what? That requires a lot of setup beforehand, and will change from track to track so you'll spend much of your available pre-race practice time monkeying with electronics same as you would monkeying with mechanical suspensions. That goes back to the first point, where you will still need a good crew chief.
Finally, this can only compensate for variables that a suspension can affect. If my brakes start to fade late in a race, there's nothing the suspension can do about it. Same for losing aerodynamic pieces of the car. I also wouldn't trust it with unexpected track surface problems (oil or other fluid spills in the race line, dirt or gravel pulled onto the track from off-track excursions, marbles when you have to go off-line for a pass or to avoid a collision, the changing amount of rubber left on braking zones and turns, etc). The transition would have to be completely smooth, and the driver would need a lot of seat time with the system under such conditions to learn what it does in such a scenario. Worst case, you'll lose control of the car because you were expecting it to handle one way, and the suspension changed right out from underneath you.
How did this get modded informative? An infinitely variable damper is not a gimmick. It would be infinitely useful. The demonstration where the car jumps is just showing how much force this suspension system can generate. The real innovation here is that everything is done electronically, whereas older systems used hydraulics. Check out this article for the basics of why this is a good thing: Active Suspension Also, GM's new Cadillac XLR uses an electromagnetic suspension, as well as the forthcoming 6th generation Corvette.
Is caused by design.
My brother-in-law is a young, but very well respected manufacturing engineer that graduated from one of the top 5 engineering schools in the US. He related to me that when he had to take the automotive engineering block, his design guidlines were to make it: modular, unrepairable, limited lifetime, and requiring an expensive machine tool infrastructure to build.
This was to prevent shade-tree and small shop mechanics from repairing/replacing/rebuilding parts, and force them to purchase replacement parts. I ran into this in the electronics industry also - you sell the device once, but only you can repair it for the next 20 years.
This sounds like one more unnecessary gimmick, like heated rearview mirrors, temp controlled seats, self-actuating shoulder belts, etc...
When it works right, it will be very nice. When it doesn't, it will be very expensive. And let's not forget that Bose will have this entire system patented, and the control modules probably potted and rigged to wipe themselves if tampered with ("I'm sorry, your module is damaged, that will take 2 weeks and $700 to get a new one").
Thank god that there isn't a software equivalent to electronics potting compound!
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.