The vehicle can lower ride height for mobility-impaired users and has side ramp lighting.
Project Arrow continues to hit its mark for the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association.
The idea to design and build an all-Canadian, electric, autonomous vehicle to showcase the country’s automotive talents has spun off an additional annual design contest called the Project Arrow Annual Mobility Design Competition.
View the complete Atlas presentation in PDF form.
Humber College students Patrick Hui, Nathan Lildhar, Andrew Liu and Han Yang comprised the winning team they named Atlas, tasked with designing a fully electric and autonomous vehicle specifically for Canadians with disabilities.
While the Project Arrow vehicle will be built, that’s not the idea behind the now annual design competition.
“This isn’t Arrow 2.0,” APMA President Flavio Volpe was quick to note. “We engaged post-secondary students with Project Arrow. And we’re using the Arrow to do an annual design competition for post-secondary students.”
Students from Carleton University's School of Industrial Design were the visionaries behind the design of the Arrow, which should be finished in time for its January 2023 world premiere.
“Project Arrow is the future of Canadian automotive,” Volpe said. “It’s supposed to be inspirational. We’re trying to get kids to think about the future of industry, and not just from a stamping-metal point of view.”
'VERY SPECIFIC DESIGN BRIEF'
The vehicle has more inclusive driving controls, such as a steering knob, accelerator ring, brake lever, and standard pedals.
With autonomous vehicles on the horizon, however far off they might be, the APMA asked design teams to create a vehicle that would be more accessible for disabled Canadians.
Volpe said there are more than six million Canadians living with some type of disability, so the association issued “a very specific design brief” for the contest.
Twelve teams from seven post-secondary schools made submissions. Three were named finalists. Team Atlas took home the $10,000 in scholarship prize. Members of all three finalist teams also won a co-op term at Autodesk, the design software firm that invented the AutoCAD drafting software.
“They get exposure and access to one of the world’s greatest auto design companies,” Volpe said of the finalists.
Design students work on their vehicle using virtual reality.
Lildhar called the entire process “an excellent opportunity to combine the skills we have been learning for the past four years at Humber College for Industrial Design and apply them to the APMA design competition.”
But it wasn’t easy.
“Designing a vehicle focused on inclusivity for people with disabilities had its challenges,” Lildhar said. “Our team had gone through multiple iterations in both exterior and interior design and learned Autodesk Alias along the way to model the vehicle.
“We were able to produce a concept that is unique in design with a focus on accessible mobility that is often overlooked in private transportation.”
The vehicle can lower ride height for mobility-impaired users and has side ramp lighting. It also has more inclusive driving controls, such as a steering knob, accelerator ring, brake lever, and standard pedals. Front seats can be stowed to allow room for a wheelchair in the cockpit.
Lildhar said the win brings opportunity.
“As Canadian transportation design students, getting sponsored work or internships during school can be limited, so being able to add [this] to our portfolios will hopefully open up some new doors in the design field,” he said.
Said Volpe: “Imagine having this on your resume?”
