Part 2 | CTOTalk: In conversation with Ultraviolette Automative’s CTO Niraj Rajmohan

Ultraviolette’s Journey

After Niraj’s journey, let’s dive in to know more about how Ultraviolette’s journey shaped over these years. From a small room to their final product almost out now, their journey has been nothing short of adventures. Read to know more.

The Spring Chicken: 2016

What started in a small room with 5 members in 2016 was meant to handle the biggest problem statement around electric vehicles: Low-performance and low-powered scooters existed. How do we build two-wheelers that outcompete IC-engine powered vehicles?

The Replicant: 2017

Niraj and his team started wrapping their heads around the initial prototypes. The prototypes contained ideas, functionalities, mechanical capabilities, and models.

“We shifted from a small room in Koramangala to a larger space of 20 people. We thought it would be enough when we had no more space to walk around”.

The Fossil: 2019

After a few years, they shifted to this much larger space. Today they have various sections for mechanical assembly, electrical design, battery engineering, etc.

The Dinosaur

After 5 years, finally, the prototype was in its ready-to-go phase.

With this let’s dig in deep as to how Niraj and his team bridged the technological gaps and created an unbelievable solution to their problem statement.

Research and Development

Building something revolutionary needs extensive market research, unequivocally: a market that depicts trends, consumer feedback, and historic data that validates the current product. Market researches revealed:

• Regulation of prices as a primary factor
• Evolution of industry might hamper production
• Charging points for electric bikes could be a blocker

While research in ergonomics set expectations with:

• Rider’s triangle position: the rider’s seating position, the handlebar position, and the footrest
• Dimensions of the auto parts
• Check on the center of gravity wrt rider

With all such factors, 7 iterations took place design-wise which gave birth to initial prototypes.

When Art meets Engineering

“Functional solutions should be combined with instructional design to deliver a promising product”.

Niraj uncovered how his team started with the creation of pure sketches on paper and led with context exploration. But the 2-D design was insufficient when it comes to checking with the real-time world. Therefore, they then converted their 2-D sketches to full-fledged 3-D models.

Virtual Reality

With the onset of virtual reality techniques, Ultraviolette’s team presented those 3-D models with virtual reality techniques. They checked the lightning effects on various bike parts, colors, and exposed inconsistencies.

They started by re-modeling these ideas onto clay modeling to experience the actual touch and feel.

Simultaneously, a team focussed purely on the electronics part of the system.
From defining the system architecture to the PCB & layout design which entailed the regulated dimensions, schematic for block diagrams, and how electronic blocks will function. Understanding microcontrollers, processors, sensitivity is also done by the team. 30 pages of schematic go into the making of one PCB design.

A team did placement reviews, layout reviews, checked low-fidelity prototypes, using components from reference and development boards, board assembly, creating bare bone electronic sys., and planning software implementation along with scrutinizing where would batteries fit, PCB go. All this keeping the constraints in check.

But when you want a prototype to function closely as the final product, you go for simulation that takes in electrical, mechanical, aerodynamics, and functional training.

Simulation and analysis

When the final prototype comes close to running on the Indian roads, they focus on:

• Circuit simulation
• Digital analogs on PCB
• Structural integrity
• The frame of vehicle for Indian roads, stress, and strains, and its impact
• Shock absorbers, wheels

The simulation team analyzed the batteries that are sensitive to normal temps. As the temp. increases, it is important to cool the batteries. This is where low aerodynamic drag of the bike structure is maintained to cool off the motor and batteries (the electrical part where the current flows through copper plates in PCB heating it up).

Assembly

After computing all the hardware components and their structure, the team standardizes components, verifies those from manufacturers, stack up components with their tolerances, resolve supplier constraints, and creates final prototypes.

Software Testing & Optimization

At last, Niraj covered how all of this was done through software testing. This is extremely computationally heavy which involves bits to electrons and then electrons that then move the vehicle or the individual on the vehicle.

What starts with early embedded software requirements goes into making the architectural system viz which microcontroller to use, what are the guidelines, which operating system to opt for, single-threaded process, device drivers, applications to be running, base-level firmware, or bootloader needed.

The team ran tests like hardware and loop testing, optimization for memory footprint, power optimization. All these tests are done keeping the code and MISRA guidelines intact.

“One of the instances that I remember is people talking about full-stack development which meant creating databases to fully usable application software. For me, the meaning of full-stack development has now changed from doing barebones seed programming running on a microcontroller to application software running on the cloud”, quotes Niraj.

Pre-qualification testing and qualification

Now, it’s time to roll out the final motorbike on the roads. It is done after component-level testing, pre-qualification of electrical testing (like short-circuit, under-voltage), redundancy tests, environmental condition testing, accelerated live testing, stress testing, dynamometer testing (the vehicle is loaded on a dynamometer), track testing (road, slopes, torture tracks, undefined surfaces).

After everything is done, Niraj stressed how we should be future prepared. How to assemble everything on a large scale and refrain from future conspiracies.

Conclusion

“From seeing the sketch on paper for the first time to now seeing our first functional motorbike F-77 running on the Madras motor track, makes me feel overwhelmed”, said Niraj with glittering eyeballs. They have achieved phenomenal results by filing various IPs and following up with geographic constraints and regulations. Seeing India’s phenomenal performing motorbike, surely pumps up all to see a ground-breaking dent in the electric vehicle world.

We surely will see more Ultraviolette Automative’s revolutionary bikes running across the streets soon. Niraj’s and Narayan’s vision to clasp the electric motor market in India can already see the bright side of the tunnel. Good luck, team.