newsletter February 2018
Event
RevolveDagen 2018 Text: Nadia Chaudry Event Manager RevolveDagen is our annual career fair at Gløshaugen where we invite our sponsors to showcase what they do to the student body here at NTNU. In addition, we host a number of competitions, display our cars, and invite a profiled personality to be our keynote speaker.
This year, RevolveDagen was held on the 22nd of February. Our goal on the day was twofold; give something back to our sponsors by introducing the student body at NTNU to them, and share our enthusiasm for our projects and innovative engineering with others. All 16 sponsor-stands were engaging, and together with our EV and DV stands, drew students throughout the day. Simens Isbar was also a success, serving ice-cream, popcorn and hotdogs during the event.
GlassgĂĽrden was filled with students eager to learn more about our sponsors and what they do.
Many people gathered around to see the first live demo of our autonomous RC-car. The demonstration was a big success!
In previous years we have had the pleasure of presenting keynote speakers such as F1 engineer Daniele Zecchetti from Ferrari, Hyperloops CEO Dirk Ahlborn and astronaut Kevin Ford. This year, we were proud to announce Bryn Balcombe, CSO at Roborace, as our keynote speaker. Roborace is a global race series for driverless electric cars that will provide a competitive platform for the autonomous driving solutions that are now being developed by many large industrial automotive and technology players, as well as top tech universities. Seeing that this is the first year Revolve is developing a Driverless Vehicle, we thought it a perfect fit. Mr. Balcombe’s presentation on the relevance of autonomous motorsport was intriguing and bolstered our belief that what we do at Revolve NTNU is highly relevant in the development of automotive technology.
Driverless
Developing an Autonomous Racecar with a Robotics Simulator Text: Lasse Henriksen Simulations Testing the full pipeline of the system is difficult when you are dealing with a racecar. One of the most time consuming and bothersome things to deal with when developing any robotics system – or any system that must interact with the environment in general – is testing. This is especially true when you’re trying to devise an autonomous racecar. Testing requires among other things a great deal of open space with a sensible ground plane and realistic lightning, and not to mention a lot of planning. A suitable area for driving is especially hard to come by for an organization living on the tiny space (so mercifully) loaned by the university in a country where it snows 101% of the time. On top of this, you also need to add some prayers for stuff to not break or stop working for unknown and dubious reasons.
The simulated RC-car inside the simulation.
The simulated RC-car and the LiDAR sensor data visualized.
We are therefore developing a simulation of the car in the Gazebo Simulator, which features physics engine(s) and realistic- environmental details and sensor data. The simulator allows us to control every little aspect of the environment all the way from the sensor data quality to the friction of the tires. So far, an RC-car has been implemented with the same sensors we’re using in the real world, along with cone tracks for testing it with. The next step is to scale it up to the actual race car size and analyzing the simulated vehicle dynamics versus the real vehicle dynamics.
Electronics
On our YouTube channel you can watch our latest edition of Tech Corner where three of our team members speak about the accumulator and AMS.
Confirmed Functionality of All Systems Text: Yohann Sandvik Electronics Team Leader In the autumn of 2017 the electronics group of Team 2018 was put together, and we set our goals for the project term. Our main goal has been to keep our new designs simple and to focus on incremental improvement. This is important, as implementing too many new features can reduce the amount of test-time, risking being left with a system that doesn’t work. During January and February we have learnt a lot about testing and debugging routines. We are proud to say that we have been able to confirm the functionality of all of our systems. We have implemented PWM-controlling (Pulse Width Modulation) in our cooling control card, successfully
been able to get accurate heading using an INS (Inertial Navigation System) with two GPSs, spun motors at 12kRPM with our in-house developed motor controller and transferred video using our telemetry system. The 19th of February we sent our final revision of PCBs (Printed Circuit Board) to production, and expect to start assembling them in three weeks. After confirming individual functionality of the systems we plan on assembling a “low-voltage-testbench”, where we will test if all systems can communicate properly over CAN (Controller Area Network), in addition to testing the functionality of the vehicleelectronics as a whole.
Event
Our most recent build car, Eld, was showcased at the conferece.
The Enova Conference - A Meeting Place for Energy and Climate Technology Text: Mats Pettersen Key Acconut Manager Electrical Vehicle Enova, one of our longtime partners, organize the Enova Conference every year. The purpose of the conference is to create a meeting place for all investors of energy and climate technology. The topics of discussion are the possible solutions that can propel Norway’s overarching goal of becoming a low carbon society. With Revolve’s focus on electric technology, we hope to educate future engineers that want to work towards achieving that goal. This year we got the opportunity to be a part of this prestigious conference and showcase our most recent build, the car Eld. In between speakers, we were able to discuss our project with the attendees of the conference, the designs and technologies that we have worked with, and implemented. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, having interesting and fruitful conversations with individuals that make up Norway’s key industries. Thanks to the people at Enova for organizing and running a seemingly flawless two-day conference.
Aerodynamics
From Designs to Reality
Making our first parts in carbon-fiber.
- Finally Getting Our Hands Dirty Text: Øyvind Sekkesæter CAD & CFD As March approaches, the aerodynamics group is diving deeper into the production phase. Our work has now moved from the office to the workshop, where we are finally getting our hands dirty making our designs a reality. February has thus far seen a number of milestones reached. Firstly, the carbon fiber layout has been modelled in Fibersim (software used for composite modelling) and cut out using Kongsberg Group’s facilities. Secondly, the first carbon fiber parts have been cast: two front tray finns and one front tray inner plate. This experience has taught us valuable lessons in carbon fiber casting, especially regarding what steps to include in order to make the de-moulding process more painless. Finally, as our MDF (Medium-density fiberboards) moulds have been milled to completion, we have gotten the chance to implement this year’s new surface treatment process – which should drastically reduce the time spent polishing the mould – and completed the first batch. All these events have happened in a relatively short amount of time, reflecting the fact that February has been a busy period. Despite the odd setbacks, the aerodynamics group remain motivated in achieving our one major goal: to make the best aerodynamic package in Revolve’s history!
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