Virtual Systems

 As a research assistant at Högskolan i Skövde I´m working in a group called Virtual Systems. This group will in a short amount of time discuss the future of dashboards in cars as Saab and Volvo. During this period a dashboard will be built in a small room as a simple platform to discuss and add features that is absent from dashboards today. The group is challenged to come up with ideas that insures the safety of the driver and its passenger. Therefore is features as "eye tracker" a good tool to ensure that the driver is aware of important things in the drivers environment. One example of this is if a car approaches from behind in high velocity and you have not looked in the rear view mirror to know of this new situation the "eye tracker" can tell you that a car is approaching. 

 One important thing about dashboards is the weight. If the weight can be reduced a reduced fuel consumption is obvious. If the dashboard is made more simple with adaptive touchscreens a number of existing parts of a dashboard can be reduced. It is from this point of view it gets really interesting for me working with in this project. The setup with multiple touchscreens is simple but expensive. A setup can look like this, see figure (1).

Figure 1. Sketch from Pro Engineer of an early setup of the dashboard and the touch screens .

 For a working platform the key is flexibility and strength, therefore is aluminum a good start. The platform contains parts as car seats from Saab 93, windscreen from Saab 95, touchscreens and  a steering wheel. A  attachment needs to be made to attach a car seat to the aluminum frame, see figure (2-3).

Figure 1. Sketch of an attachments for a car seat (3D)

Figure 2. Sketch of an attachments for a car seat viewed from the side