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“Zero” effort

DO A SWIRL Switch to Roto mode

‘Zero turning radius’ is readily associated with lawn mowers. Where passenger vehicles are concerned, this facility is found only in a few concept cars. So, when four students (Lionel Ernest Edwin, P. Nagendra Kumar, A. Shyam Sundar and S. Bharadwaj) of KCG College of Technology attempted to create a car that would rotate about its own axis, they were taking the road less travelled. Lionel Ernest Edwin hails from Visakhapatnam.

Apart from this challenge, the four had to tailor their project to a shoe-string budget. This right away ruled out visits to showrooms for automobile parts.

They were scouring the second hand market for used parts. Their dream machine has the differential of an autorickshaw, the suspension and tyres of a Maruti and the 150cc, two-stroke engine of an Ind Suzuki.

The ‘Roto-Car’, as they have chosen to call their invention, has to be kick-started. The kick-start lever juts out of car’s grille!

For the Roto-Car’s body, they did use the shell of any vehicle. “We built it ourselves.”

The car can be switched between two mode — normal and roto. While in the normal mode, it functions like any other car.

Only that the gears have to engaged the way you would engage them in an Ind Suzuki!

Once switched to the Roto mode, the car derives the benefits of a hydraulically expandable track rod (HETR) set-up and a Drive Altering Mechanism (DAM), appended to the engine after the gear box and the propeller shaft. In the Roto mode, “the hydraulic pistons on either side of the rack expand and the DAM alters the direction of the drive so that the vehicle executes a turn about its own axis.”

Selling their Roto-Car, the four students and their guide Prof. G. Maikandan put forth these points: “A car with a Roto mechanism can be parked into a slot that is the same size as the car. U-turn becomes much easier.

Our Roto-Car rules out the need for the reverse gear in certain situations. A U-turn in an extremely narrow road is impossible without reversing the car, except if you are driving our Roto-Car. As the Roto-Car is capable of a 360 degree swirl, it is ideal for off-roading.”

A hydraulically expandable track rod (HETR) unit which gets the wheels into position so that the car turn about its own axis. A drive alternating mechanism (DAM) which, through a set of gears, alters the direction of the drive.

Taking U-turn made easy.

As a 360 degree turn is possible, this mechanism helps off-roading. Thanks to its zero turning radius, the car can be pulled out of a narrow dead-end without reversing.

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