Khitchdee Design

Projects

1. A lightweight bicycle-trailer design

A steel-tube chassis attaches to the bicycle's rear-wheel hub. This chassis rests on a narrow axle, placed just behind the bicycle's rear-wheel. The axle rolls on 2 pairs of small bicycle-wheels. This axle is steerable via a mechanical coupling with the steering system of the bicycle's front-wheel.

The chassis adds stability and shock-absorption to the riding characteristics of the bicycle, without reducing maneoverability. A cargo-carrying frame can be added on top of this chassis and attached to the bicycle-frame's seat-post corner.

The trailer adds only 70cm to the length of the bicycle, hence the turning radius of the bicycle + trailer is similar to that of the bicycle alone.

Learn More

2. A tool for specifying a land-vehicle design

This tool, codenamed The Specifier, is an alternative to Solidworks for the structural and construction-process specification of a land-vehicle design.

It is an improvement over Solidworks for structural land-vehicle design via 1) a much simpler user-interface, 2) a specially designed virtual protractor for accurately measuring or specifying the angles in a design and 3) a narrow domain focus -- land-vehicle design specification.

Learn more

3. A far simpler app-UI design framework for mutiple form-factor devices.

This app-UI design framework is based on a new, temporal approach to UI representation, that makes it a lot simpler to design app-UIs across device form-factors and hardware UI capabilities.

It's benefits in app-UI development are:

1) Native interfaces to device hardware capabilities, 2) Device-consistent app-deployment and 3) UI-consistency across devices.

These features make it useful for developing high-value or mission-critical apps such as enterprise apps.

Learn More

Industry Landscape

Land-vehicle (structural) Design Companies

The structural design of land-vehicles can be categorised into 4 segments. 1) (4-wheeled) Automobiles are designed in-house by global auto manufacturers. 2) (2-wheeled) Motorcyles and scooters are also designed in-house by smaller manufacturers. Some independent design companies also exit 3) (2-wheeled) Bicycles are designed in-house by established brands. Several independent design companies design bicycles. 4) 3-wheelers are a niche design segment and most designs are done in-house, by manuf

Automotive

A basic structural design is developed and refined over several years.

Minor changes are made to this structure, which is primarily the chassis.

Each design is produced at very large scale in assembly-line factories.

Hence, very few designs are made, and each design happens in-house, over several years, linked to a production process.

Motorcycles

The design approach is similar to automotive, the number of chassis designs is a lot larger and design revisions happen

twice as frequently as automotive.

Most design is still done in-house by large manufacturers,

but there is more outsourcing of the design process.

Each design is a lot cheaper to protoype than automotive.

Bicycles

A bicycle is designed as a bicycle-frame, by a an established brand.

Individual companies design

wheel and tires,

gear-shifting mechanisms,

brakes,

drivetrain components such as chain-cranks, chains and freewheels,

and shock-absorption systems.

Of late, DC-motor based drivetrain assist systems have become very common.

3-Wheelers

Motorised 3-wheelers are commonly produced industrially for cheap and traffic-efficient transportation (cargo and to a lesser extent as passenger taxis).

These are designed in-houes.

Pedal-powered 3-wheelers are very cheap to protoype. A handful of design campanies design and produce several such designs at very small scale.

In recent years, DC-motor powered cargo trailers have also been used

as a bicycle add-on, and have similar operational characteristics

as traditional trikes.

App-UI Design Tools

This industry started out as an in-house vertical industry with device manufacturers, in conjunction with OS vendors providing app development tools, which include app-UI design tools. With the proliferation of device form-factors, the industry got a lot more complicated.