UNNC graduates win gold award in local entrepreneurship competition
Recently, Liaoyuan Ran, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), and his team have distinguished themselves out of 106 high-end talent teams and projects after obtaining Gold Award in the Eighth China (Ningbo) “Qisi Yongdong” Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition with a semi-active suspension system they developed.
According to Liaoyuan, this system overrides the requirement traditional cars have to adjust the suspension system manually. Instead, the car’s suspension can be adjusted through the installation of a human-machine interaction terminal. “For example, the car will automatically adjust to a suspension mode to stabilise the car’s posture on bumpy mountainous roads and another more comfortable mode on city roads,” Liaoyuan said.
This product is designed by Liaoyuan and his partner, Dongxuan Jiang. They met and cooperated in a UNNC summer research project to design a formula racing car, after which they formed a team to continue formula car development. In 2020, their team developed electronic components for electric vehicles and started their business inside the university’s Li Dak Sum Incubator. After a year, they developed a semi-active suspension system suitable for two wheeled vehicles, which is now in production and provides order products for secondary market manufacturers.
Now, Liaoyuan is still focusing on research related to control algorithm, actuator design and experimental analysis in Li Dak Sum Incubator as a PhD student of Dr Dunant Halim. Dongxuan, currently working for a New Zealand start-up electric motorcycle company as an electrical engineer, is still working on the upstream and downstream supply chain of components and the design and adaptation of electrical systems.
Liaoyuan introduced that now many motorcycle companies have already adopted their suspension system such as Niu, Ninebot as well as Kawasaki. Some prototypes had also been sent overseas for testing. Moreover, they are working on the upgrading of this suspension product. In the future, he and Dongxuan will seek cooperation opportunities with original equipment manufacturers for development and continue to develop the supply chain for mass production.
“This award is an affirmation and encouragement to us, and we really appreciate the strong support of Li Dak Sum Incubator,” said Liaoyuan. “I really appreciate my supervisor, Dr Dunant Halim. When I was an undergraduate, he led me to conduct research and supported our formula racing car project. Now he continues to offer valuable advice and guidance to the development of our suspension system. I hope one day our products will be applied on the intelligent products of electric vehicles."