With the rise of autonomous cars in recent years, our team responded in the only way we know – with curiosity, enthusiasm, and dedication. Thus we founded the AI team which seeks to give students an opportunity to get into the exciting field of driverless cars, apply their classroom knowledge to a real project, obtain experience in collaborating in a group and of course race the car at Formula Student events around the globe!

The team

In October 2017, EUFS expanded with a brand new project, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) team. We aim to retrofit one of the previous EUFS Class 1 cars into a fully electric self-driving race car and participate in international student competitions as part of Formula Student Driverless. As an intermediate step to that goal, we participated in the IMechE’s FS-AI competition where we created the software for a self-driving car and applied it to a vehicle provided by the competition organisers (the one you see on the pictures here). Thus far, we have won all 3 competitions ran – in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

This is the more mechanical engineering part of the team who are responsible for the retrofitting and design of the chassis, suspension and bodywork of the car. This subteam works closely with all other subteams as anything that goes on the car must be put there by the hardware integration subteam.

Potential projects:
– Emergency Braking System
– Steering actuation system
– Traction accumulator structure
– EV drivetrain development
– Integration of new components in the chassis

This subteam develops the electric powertrain of the car which makes it move. This involves creating the battery system, wiring the high voltage lines, driving the motor and developing the motor control system. If you want to get into the electric future of cars, then this is the subteam for you!

Potential projects:
– High-voltage circuit design
– Battery design
– Motor and battery cooling systems
– Control system for electric powertrain
– Powertrain testing and optimisation

All complex systems work because of the complex electronics behind them. Our car is no different and will feature a variety of circuits for controlling the powertrain, actuators, recording telemetry data and of course communicating with the autonomous driving software. If you like circuits and code equality, then this is the team for you!

Potential projects:
– Control circuits for actuators
– Telemetry electronics
– Sensor configuration and interfacing
– Wiring & PCB design

Responsible for helping the car “see” the surroundings. This subteam receives data from the sensors of the car, such as camera and Lidar, and attempts to detect objects around it. In this subteam you will have the opportunity to work with machine learning and computer vision algorithms, as well as optimize them to make them run fast!

Potential projects:
– Camera object detection
– Lidar object detection
– Machine Learning algorithm development
– Object fusion

Responsible for creating a map of the racetrack and estimating the car’s position within it. This subteam also estimates the dynamics of the car in order to help it to drive faster. Here you’ll get the opportunity to do vehicle state estimation, sensor fusion, vehicle dynamics and SLAM.

Potential projects:
– Sensor fusion and position estimation
– Simultenious Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms
– Data visualisation and analysis frameworks
– Vehicle dynamics modelling

Once the car knows both where the track is and where it’s positioned within it; it can finally plan its path and decide how to follow that path. Ultimately, this is the subteam in charge of making the car go fast. Here you will get the opportunity to learn about optimal control theory, vehicle dynamics, trajectory planning and push the car to the absolute limit.

Potential projects:
– Numerical optimisation
– Optimal control
– Vehicle dynamics and system identification

In order to develop the software for the car, we need a suitable development environment, process and deployment structure. If you’re interested in system architecture, simulations, automated testing, continuous integration and much more, then this is the subteam for you.

Potential projects:
– Devops workflow development
– Environment and deployment structures
– Simulation development
– Data storage and analysis