First off a quick introduction,
Although I'm not a builder of robots myself I am very interested in the operation and controls of electronic actuators. I'm a mechanical engineer (in training) living in Dublin in my final year of my course and I'm midway through completing my thesis project which I hope some of you here can help me with.

In order for those interested to understand the idea behind this project the following text is required so apologies for the long read. I'm sure some of you will get bored half way through and I don't blame you as its very wordy!

So the title of my project is "The Design and Construction of an Active Rear Wing for an Alfa Romeo Touring Car".
The active wing system system is for a 3.2l V6 Alfa Romeo 155 touring car that will eventually be used in the Irish Touring Car Championship. As said before the project is for my final year in college and it will all be designed and built by myself. The wing will be moved by two GL-750s Linear Actuators (with 50mm of travel) which are mounted in the boot vertically. These are connected to the wing by link rods which change the wings angle of attack. The wing is required to have three preset positions A, B and C.

Postion A is the Low Drag DRS position at which the wing is at 1 degrees of attack. This will give optimum straight line speed.

Position B is the High Downforce position at which the wing is located at 15-18 degrees of attack. This will give optimum levels of downforce while cornering.

Position C is the High Drag Air Brake position which creates maximum drag in order to slow the car while under braking.

So the idea is that the wing will move to these various positions semi automatically, I have an ideal system that sounds fairly straight forward in theory but I am really lost as to how the electrics will work so I am open to any ideas or suggestions.
As said earlier the system uses two actuators which must work in sync. The actuators been used have no feedback or limit switches as standard so these need to be incorporated externally. They will run off the cars 12v battery which is also located in the boot.

Position B will be the wings home position as such.
The steering wheel has a single push button which the driver pushes when he comes onto a straight section of track. This then activates the actuators to move to position A.
When the driver comes to the end of the straight he then brakes as usual. The brake lights will then override the button control and activate the wing to move to position C which slows the car before the corner. Once the driver takes his foot off the pedal the wing then moves back to its home position.


I know its not a simple theory so at the moment i would be happy just to get some sort of control on the wing and then move from there. I really would appreciate any feedback or advice. Some lectures have mentioned the use of Arduino hardware but I have no experience with this.

The plan is to have the wing built in the next few weeks and then from there i will move onto the electonic controls

Thanks for taking an interest and making it to the end of this!

Below is a basic design although no link rods are shown here.


Thanks again
Peter