ETH Zurich's Top Racing Car Outruns the Competition
High-tech image processing is an important part of success
A Thursday morning in June at 10 am in Hangar 3 of the Zurich Innovation Park at Dübendorf Airport. The hangar serves as a workshop, the walls are lined with shelves that reach to the ceiling and are crammed with tools and components. In the middle of the room are two almost finished racing cars. The tyres and the front part of the car are still missing. Five students in their early to mid-twenties scurry around near the car. Some are looking intently at their laptops. Others are examining individual components of the car. All are wearing a black and red T-shirt with the inscription "AMZ". That stands for Akademischer Motorsportverein Zürich, whose workshop is located in Hangar 3. The students are preparing their racing car for the new Formula Student season.
Formula Student is an engineering design competition for students. Student teams conceptualise and build a race car from scratch. The cars from different universities then compete against each other in races. There are electric and combustion engine categories. Participation is possible in each case with autonomously driving cars or with a driver. The racing cars of the different teams compete against each other in worldwide competitions, for example at the legendary Hockenheimring or at the Hungaroring near Budapest. The student teams are interdisciplinary from different courses of study: Computer Science, Mechatronics, Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Business Administration.
AMZ achieved world record for acceleration of racing cars in 2016
The Academic Motorsport Club Zurich (AMZ) was founded in 2006 by students at ETH Zurich and has been participating in Formula Student with purely electrically powered racing cars since 2010. Team AMZ is one of the top teams in this class. In 2016, the team achieved an acceleration record with their electric car. Their vehicle accelerated to 100 kilometres per hour in just 1.513 seconds.
Every year, the team redesigns the car. Thus, the team of the year 2022 is building an electric racing car that can drive autonomously as well as be driven by a driver. For the construction of the racing car, the students have to invest many hours of their free time in addition to their studies. But the effort is worth it. Emmanouil Andreopoulos from the AMZ says enthusiastically: "It's a huge opportunity to work on this practical project at such a high level. We can work with equipment here that we wouldn't have access to otherwise."
Image processing as an important part of autonomous driving
Building the race car is a long process: After six months of planning, the students start building. The construction of the chassis and the vehicle suspension then takes about 2 months. At the same time, the young designers work on the necessary software and hardware so that the autonomously driving racing car can perceive its surroundings and this can be translated into the steering.
Image processing is an important component for recognising the environment, which is important for autonomous driving. Industrial cameras and LIDARs help to recognise the course of the track.
In the latest car, the AMZ team uses only one camera instead of two cameras as last year to reduce weight. This required a very wide-angle lens, which they found in the Kowa LM4HC. This lens allows an angle of view of up to 112° for a 1" sensor. "We tested various lenses and found an ideally suited, robust wide-angle lens in the LM4HC," Emmanouil Andreopoulos said.
AMZ is also one of the favorite teams in the 2022/23 season. Andreopoulos is optimistic that his team will once again be right up there at the front. "I'm really looking forward to the next races, where our car can prove itself in practice," he said.
The following video features an interview with Emmanouil Andreopoulos and Antonio Arbues, the team's CTO:
A Thursday morning in June at 10 am in Hangar 3 of the Zurich Innovation Park at Dübendorf Airport. The hangar serves as a workshop, the walls are lined with shelves that reach to the ceiling and are crammed with tools and components. In the middle of the room are two almost finished racing cars. The tyres and the front part of the car are still missing. Five students in their early to mid-twenties scurry around near the car. Some are looking intently at their laptops. Others are examining individual components of the car. All are wearing a black and red T-shirt with the inscription "AMZ". That stands for Akademischer Motorsportverein Zürich, whose workshop is located in Hangar 3. The students are preparing their racing car for the new Formula Student season.
Formula Student is an engineering design competition for students. Student teams conceptualise and build a race car from scratch. The cars from different universities then compete against each other in races. There are electric and combustion engine categories. Participation is possible in each case with autonomously driving cars or with a driver. The racing cars of the different teams compete against each other in worldwide competitions, for example at the legendary Hockenheimring or at the Hungaroring near Budapest. The student teams are interdisciplinary from different courses of study: Computer Science, Mechatronics, Automotive Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Business Administration.
AMZ achieved world record for acceleration of racing cars in 2016
The Academic Motorsport Club Zurich (AMZ) was founded in 2006 by students at ETH Zurich and has been participating in Formula Student with purely electrically powered racing cars since 2010. Team AMZ is one of the top teams in this class. In 2016, the team achieved an acceleration record with their electric car. Their vehicle accelerated to 100 kilometres per hour in just 1.513 seconds.
Every year, the team redesigns the car. Thus, the team of the year 2022 is building an electric racing car that can drive autonomously as well as be driven by a driver. For the construction of the racing car, the students have to invest many hours of their free time in addition to their studies. But the effort is worth it. Emmanouil Andreopoulos from the AMZ says enthusiastically: "It's a huge opportunity to work on this practical project at such a high level. We can work with equipment here that we wouldn't have access to otherwise."
Image processing as an important part of autonomous driving
Building the race car is a long process: After six months of planning, the students start building. The construction of the chassis and the vehicle suspension then takes about 2 months. At the same time, the young designers work on the necessary software and hardware so that the autonomously driving racing car can perceive its surroundings and this can be translated into the steering.
Image processing is an important component for recognising the environment, which is important for autonomous driving. Industrial cameras and LIDARs help to recognise the course of the track.
In the latest car, the AMZ team uses only one camera instead of two cameras as last year to reduce weight. This required a very wide-angle lens, which they found in the Kowa LM4HC. This lens allows an angle of view of up to 112° for a 1" sensor. "We tested various lenses and found an ideally suited, robust wide-angle lens in the LM4HC," Emmanouil Andreopoulos said.
AMZ is also one of the favorite teams in the 2022/23 season. Andreopoulos is optimistic that his team will once again be right up there at the front. "I'm really looking forward to the next races, where our car can prove itself in practice," he said.
The following video features an interview with Emmanouil Andreopoulos and Antonio Arbues, the team's CTO:
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