Project Details

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Vehicle Controller Unit (VCU) Design for Retrofitted Farm Transport Vehicles.

Company: Rathithi Polytechnic

Major(s):
Primary: EE
Secondary: ME
Optional: CMPSC

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

This project aims to design Vehicle Controller Units (VCU) for use in retrofitted tuktuks. Tuktuks are three wheeler Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV). In Kenya, out-of-service tuktuks can be acquired cheaply locally and retrofitted into Electric Vehicles (EV) lowering the cost of acquisition and cost of operation within the context of farm transport. To further lower the cost of acquisition, increase mean uptime and reduce the cost of repair, this project aims to design a VCU that can be manufactured and repaired locally (in Kenya). The design goals are: reliability; the ability to manufacture and repair the VCU locally (in Kenya), and; modularity to allow module swapping as a means of repair The expected deliverables are: one prototype of the VCU (hardware), accompanying software for the VCU supporting sensored Field Oriented Control (FOC), and; well defined VCU failure modes, which give feedback to the driver/technician, and an accompanying troubleshooting manual/checklist isolating the failed module/subsystem.