Congratulations to University of Edinburgh team at virtual Formula Student competition 2020
Posted on July 31, 2020 in Events
Over the past three years Mapix technologies have been a Platinum sponsor of the University of Edinburgh Formula Student (EUFS) team. The team have been developing their knowledge and experience in developing an autonomous race car. Our founder and CTO Gert Riemersma has helped with mentoring and we have provided their Velodyne Puck LiDAR sensor. This incredibly dedicated team has had great success winning the autonomous elements of the Formula Student competition at Silverstone in 2018 and 2019.
After great success with the AI software competitions in previous years, the team decided this year to build its own fully autonomous racing vehicle in the Automated Driving System (ADS) class for Formula Student UK 2020.
EUFS autonomous race car design
Formula Student competition goes virtual in 2020
Unfortunately, this year the physical competition at Silverstone was cancelled. However, the static events (design, real world application, simulation development and business presentations) took place online in July.
Rokas Giedraitis from the EUFS team commented, “This brought many interesting new challenges, provided the team with a better understanding of autonomous control. Most importantly it allowed the team to better test its software. This led to greatly improved performance. The design of the vehicle was finalised in March but due to the Covid-19 pandemic occurring during the most crucial development period, very little was manufactured. Being able to collaborate online, the team used the time to properly reflect upon the design decisions aiming for high levels of safety and redundancy, ensuring that all rules were met.”
Winning the ADS category
Rokias added. “The team won the ADS Design award which means that we had the best software and hardware design among all teams in the same class. We have also won the overall ADS competition, suggesting that we are currently in the best position to be the first team in the UK to finally build an autonomous racing vehicle and have it enter the Formula Student UK competition in 2021.”
This video shows data visualisation of what the car sees and how it plans its actions. The complete autonomous racing software stack for FSUK 2020 virtual events.
Mapix technologies Marketing Manager, Jason Rogers commented, “We cannot wait to see how the team develop their autonomous race car further in preparation for the 2021 competition. We look forward to continuing to support the University of Edinburgh team and congratulate them on their continued success.”
See more about the teams learning with LiDAR over the past three seasons. Click here
See the EUFS team winning for a second year. Click here
See more about Velodyne LiDAR scanners. Click here