Clearmotion’s aim is to build an intelligent suspension system that can do away with jolts, and let drivers change the feel of their car's ride at will.
The key component is an electro-hydraulic system that clips on to a car’s suspension and shifts the wheels as the car moves over bumps in the road. As the wheels move up and down, left and right, the car – and the people within it – stay perfectly still in the centre.
The other items are a network of eight accelerometers on – one behind each wheel and another four on the vehicle body. Five milliseconds after an accelerometer detects a wheel starting to dip into a pothole, it sends a signal to an electric motor that injects a fluid into the relevant units, forcing the wheel to extend downwards.
With every journey, ClearMotion’s sensors generate reams of data, which, over time, allow ClearMotion to build up a detailed image of every lump and bump on a given road. The the system can draw on this data the next time it encounters the same stretch. “As you're doing the same commute every day, the car is going to know what it's going over, and it's just going to get better and better with every ride,” says ClearMotion’s founder and CEO, Shakeel Avadhany. This information could be shared between cars, allowing them to alert each other about upcoming road features. For example, if a car were warned that it is approaching a speedbump, the suspension could adapt at just the right moment so that passengers would barely feel the bump.
Sensor data could even be used to improve the roads themselves. Avadhany plans to collaborate with governments – sharing data from ClearMotion to flag up roads in need of maintenance. He says that his system can identify a crack in the road long before it develops into a pothole, and passing that data on to city authorities could save huge sums in road repairs.
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