Automobile Engineering

In this work, an electro-mechanical direction sensor was designed and developed. The purpose of this electro-mechanical direction sensor is to measure the change in the heading angle for a wheeled ground vehicle. The mechanism used in our designed sensor is inspired from the ancient Chinese piece of mechanical art; The South Pointing Chariot. The south pointing chariot uses mechanical gears in a special arrangement in order to maintain a figure/pointer pointing to a fixed direction, whatever the chariot direction is The mechanical part of the South Pointing Chariot has been integrated with an electronic circuit to form the electro-mechanical direction sensor. The designed sensor can be used for vehicle guidance and control. The measured data of the electro-mechanical direction sensor has been compared to magnetic compass readings to validate its output. A test to drive a vehicle in a predefined path was performed using the feedback of the electro-mechanical direction sensor. The results showed good performance of the electromechanical direction sensor in measuring the change in the heading angle for a 3-wheeled vehicle and controlling it.