DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A VARIABLE DYNAMIC VEHICLE

This paper is a Progress Report describing the design and construction of a Variable Dynamic Testbed Vehicle, VDTV, suitable for use as a test tool researchers in the field of automotive safety. The VDTV project was sponsored and funded the United States Department of Transportation, Intelligent Transportation System/Joint Program Office. The VDTV performance will be programmable way of an Onboard laptop computer readily accessible to the test driver or a test conductor. The vehicle systems available for programming are the vehicle by wire systems which are the front and rear steer; steering feel; brakes with ABS, traction control, and yaw control; throttle; front and rear anti-roll bars; and the variable rate suspension. The base vehicle is a Roush Technologies modified 1995 Ford Taurus SHO used in the Bob Bondurant high performance driving school in Phoenix, Arizona. The VDTV will provide researchers a safe, versatile research tool that can quickly and economically simulate a variety of vehicle test conditions for studying vehicle dynamic performance, human factors, driver physiological performance, and intelligent vehicle crash avoidance systems both singularly or in combination. For the covering abstract see IRRD E102514.