THE DRIVETRAIN.
A traditional geometry with rear-wheel drive, independent suspension, and 80 mm all-terrain tyres. Identical kinematics to the F1TENTH reference car, the same control law transfers without changes.
THE BRUSHED MOTOR.
A purpose-spec brushed motor with integrated encoder. Brushless motors give better top-end and efficiency, but brushed motors stall cleanly when you bump a wall, which is the failure mode we wanted for a classroom car.
No-load: ~11,000 RPM
Drive: Rear axle, fixed reduction
Closed loop: MCU (microcontroller unit) velocity controller (see Compute)
THE STEERING SERVO.
The steering servo is heavily over-specified for a 380 mm car. That margin is intentional, you can hit a wall at modest speed and the servo will not strip its gears. It's also waterproof, which mostly matters for spilled drinks in classroom labs.
STEERING KINEMATICS.
Steering follows simple bicycle geometry: steering angle δ and wheelbase L = 280 mm give path curvature κ = tan(δ) / L. The Playground simulator models the car as a . Pure-pursuit or controllers written for F1TENTH carry over directly.