Update
on
Aurora
Powertrain
Over the last few weeks, the powertrain
department has not been sitting still,
on the contrary! A few weeks ago, the
material for the rim centres was
delivered to the miller and they are now
in full production. In addition, the
moulds for the carbon drums and the
layup are being finalized.
The layout and components of the new
cooling system have also been
determined. Here in we will implement
new cooling lines that are 1.5kg lighter
compared to last year. Finally, the
properties of the new radiator were
calculated and sent to the
manufacturer for production.
Composites
The concepts of our aerodynamic package
are finalized. With five students, we
made a design that is stronger, more
efficient and more innovative than the
targets set in September. The latest
analyses of our aerodynamic package are
being examined. Designs for our moulds
are being evaluated in collaboration
with our partners. In doing so, we will
be ready to laminate the parts in time
and verify our simulations with real
time data gained on
test events.
Vehicle dynamics
Most of our work has been happening from
our home office in the last couple of
weeks. As the primary point in the
agenda is the programming of the ECU of
the car, this doesn't pose a problem.
This ECU includes the control of the
semi active suspension, torque
vectoring, etc. The thesis students have
finished their literature study, and are
now starting their research.
Electronics
The first new PCBs have been assembled.
These are being tested before the bulk
order of the new battery are placed.
Next up: finishing the cable loom of
Aurora. Finally, all the components
arrived to finish these in the final
sprint. So we hope, to turn on the high
voltage systems in the coming weeks.
Lastly, we started a project with the
third year students at Campus Group T.
They will expand the capabilities of our
simulator (Umicore Isaac of the
2015-2016 season). They have some great
ideas and we're excited to see their
results at the end of the academic
year!
Driverless
For driverless, all the algorithms are
getting glued together into a great
working Autonomous System. This is
already the case for our mapping and
localization algorithm together with our
LIDAR pipeline. The next piece that is
getting glued to our Autonomous System
will be our control pipeline. This part
is responsible for controlling the car
and determine the path the car is
supposed to take through the
track.
All of our algorithms are getting
validated with simulated data. During
one of these tests we noticed the
importance of compensating the sensor
data for pitch and roll of the car, as
well as the compensation of processing
delay of the data.
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