Publication

Abstract : Many of the supermarkets have narrow spacing between each shelf which makes customers difficult to navigate between them. Also, during rush hours, most of the bill counters are fully occupied which makes people disinterested. The COVID pandemic has also made people to avoid contact with others thus preferring online shopping. Unlike online shopping, in offline shopping, people have the advantage of physically interacting with the shopping items. This can be achieved by a smart trolley which is compact, high payload-to-weight ratio and billing machine integrated into it. This paper discusses the design and analysis of electric motor-powered compact trolley chassis. A space frame structure is used as the trolley design as it has a high strength-to-weight ratio. Various tube cross sections are compared to find which one has high stiffness to carry the load. Static structural analysis is carried out for different materials. Different materials are chosen based on Ashby charts. A parameter called material index or performance index is used to find the best material for the application. Different cross section of the tubes is also analyzed. Modal analysis is also carried out to avoid resonance. Based on the results it is found that carbon fibre is better suited for the application. But when the cost and manufacturing constraints are considered, aluminium profile tubes are the best option. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.