Mechanical foundations for autonomy and reliability
At RD8, we design to allow for variation, instead of trying to prevent it. This approach leads to robust products that you can trust.
Autonomy Starts with Mechanical Confidence
When developing autonomous systems, most attention goes to software. Yet the mechanical foundation often determines whether the system can meet safety and reliability targets.
New regulations such as ECE R79 introduce unfamiliar requirements, and companies respond by adding redundant systems to mitigate risk. This overengineering inflates cost, increases complexity, and creates more failure points.
Without proven experience in these new architectures, teams lack confidence in their designs and struggle to balance safety, performance, and time-to-market.
Unknowns in Mechanical Designs Drive Risk
Autonomous systems remove human input,which means mechanical components must perform flawlessly under all conditions. New concepts introduce unknowns in kinematics, force paths, and tolerance behavior that cannot be solved by incremental improvements. Late discovery of these issues leads to cascading redesigns and excessive backup systems. These add complexity and cost without guaranteeing reliability.
The solution is to identify variation risks early and design for robustness at scale, ensuring predictable performance even in unfamiliar environments.
Data-Driven Confidence for Autonomous Mobility
Our approach is industry-independent and fully data-driven, designed to complement the deep domain knowledge of automotive engineers. When new requirements and unfamiliar architectures introduce unknowns, RD8 provides clarity through objective metrics and proven principles. This partnership enables experts to make informed decisions and innovate confidently without adding time to market.
We are not solely automotive experts, and that is our strength. RD8 introduces design quality scores from the earliest concept stage, tracking progress across all eight disciplines throughout development, independent of the industry. These metrics highlight improvement trends, pinpoint weak areas, and provide a clear answer to the question: When is a design good enough?
By making robustness measurable and transparent, we reduce uncertainty and prevent costly late-stage fixes, enabling predictable performance in safety-critical systems.
Steer-by-wire Steering Gear
Steer-by-wire systems introduce new challenges in load paths, tolerances, and failure modes that cannot be addressed through historical experience alone.
RD8 is particularly effective in this environment because it links kinematics, force flow, and tolerance behavior at the concept stage, making robustness measurable before physical testing.
This enabled early optimization of the steering gear for safety, reliability, and reduced system complexity.
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