Autonomous driving is not only of interest to car manufacturers, but also to students from many faculties who are preparing for a career in the automotive industry. They compare themselves and share their ideas in the international design competition “Formula Student”. The Ecurie Aix team from RWTH Aachen University is using a Mini-ITX industrial motherboard from Kontron in its current racing car. The team is supported by Kontron’s sales partner Aaronn Electronic.
“Probieren geht über Studieren” (similar in English: The proof of the pudding is in the eating) is an old saying that can be found in the German dictionary compiled by the Brothers Grimm. But things have changed. “Trying” and studying are no longer mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they can be perfectly combined. The best proof of this is the “Formula Student”, an international student design competition in which over 500 teams from all over the world take part. One of the longest-standing participants from Germany is the Ecurie Aix team from RWTH Aachen University, founded in 1999.
In the competition, student teams design and construct their own racing cars within a season, which have to prove themselves both on the race track and in several additional categories before the strict eyes of a jury. As a result, the participants gain valuable practical experience in addition to the theoretical knowledge from lectures and seminars. The car manufacturers also value this. They actively support the competition, which is now the largest and most important of its kind.
TRADITIONAL TEAM ECURIE AIX
Since 2014, Ecurie Aix has been taking part in the competition exclusively with electric vehicles, and since 2017 with two vehicles each year – one driverless and one with a driver. The team consists of 60 to 70 students from different faculties – mechanical engineers, computer scientists, electrical engineers and industrial engineers. It’s not just about building a functioning vehicle, but also organising the team, procuring the materials, negotiating with suppliers and sponsors – and all this alongside their regular studies.
The components of the vehicle are designed and manufactured by the students themselves as much as possible. Only parts whose design is so complex that they cannot be manufactured by the students themselves are produced by the team according to their own specifications.
In recent years, the competition has become considerably more professional and is now at a very high technical level. The rules and regulations for participation are currently 130 pages long. Much of this is for safety reasons, but apart from this, it is designed quite freely despite its large size, as the aim is to encourage the widest possible range of solutions.
NEW REQUIREMENTS THROUGH DRIVERLESS SOFTWARE
Of course, every team participating wants to win the races, but it also benefits from dealing with practical problems and the cooperation with the other teams. This is also the view of the manufacturers, who keep a very close eye on the competition.
(Image: In the 2018/19 racing season, the Ecurie Aix team from RWTH Aachen University is relying on an industrial mITX board from Kontron in the Formula Student and is being supported in its implementation by Kontron sales partner Aaronn Electronic)
A competition with driverless cars was added three years ago. Ecurie Aix is already competing in this category with its third model in the 2018/19 season. Software plays an even greater role in the driverless competition than in the driver competition. Not only do the route have to be recorded and assessed using sensors, but the best possible route and driving behaviour also have to be calculated and the necessary control commands transmitted to the vehicle.
DECISION IN FAVOUR OF THE MITX-CFL FROM KONTRON
In previous years, the software required for this ran on an embedded system from NVIDIA. “Autonomous driving involves a lot of optimisation processes in the software. In addition, everything should be calculated in real time if possible. If a calculation loop is added to the optimisation, this leads to a significantly higher power requirement,” explains Sebastian Lossen, Technical Team Leader Driverless at Ecurie Aix.
His team has therefore decided to build a system that is as modular as possible as the basis for the software of the eace07.d, the current model of their racing car. The operating system is Ubuntu, which can be programmed close to the hardware. Compact design and performance efficiency were the basic requirements when selecting the hardware.
In its search, Ecurie Aix finally found what it was looking for at Kontron. Its mITX-CFL-S mini-ITX industrial motherboard not only offers the required flexibility in terms of CPU and RAM. It also impressed with its large number of interfaces, including three Ethernet ports, four RS232 connections and many USB ports.
(Image: Thanks to its compact design, high performance efficiency, its numerous and diverse connections and the possibilities of modular construction, the Kontron mITX-CFL-S became the centrepiece of the driverless racing car eace07.d of the Ecurie Aix team from RWTH Aachen University in the Formula Student)
SHORT ROUTES, FAST RESULTS
Based on past experience, the racing team was also keen to be close to the manufacturer. The student team’s enquiry was passed on by the manufacturer Kontron to its trusted sales partner Aaronn Electronic. They not only took care of the delivery of the boards, but also handled the RAM assembly. They also supported the students with driver customisation.
“We were very happy to accept the enquiry from Aachen,” says Alexander Squarra, Account Manager at Aaronn Electronic. “We have many years of experience in supporting customers from industry, from system analysis to product selection and prototype development through to series production. However, being able to accompany the Ecurie Aix team in the construction of a driverless racing car is also a great opportunity for us to deal with future topics and help shape innovations”. Squarra is therefore hoping for a long and successful collaboration with Ecurie Aix.
Aaronn is also open to collaborating with other student teams and start-ups. “At 25 years old, our company is just the right age,” smiles Squarra. “This means we have a lot of experience with embedded PCs in a wide range of designs, industrial display solutions including various touch technologies, and in the field of 19″ rackmount servers, but we are not yet too old not to be enthusiastic about new application ideas – true to the motto: the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN KONTRON AND AARONN ELECTRONIC
Aaronn Electronic GmbH in Puchheim near Munich has been one of Kontron’s most successful sales partners and system integrators for embedded systems for many years. The cooperation between Kontron and Aaronn goes back more than 20 years, during which the partners have jointly realised a large number of customer projects. Thanks to Kontron’s extensive portfolio of hardware, software, and service solutions and Aaronn’s expertise and flexibility, the partners achieve the optimum possibilities for each customer application.
ABOUT ECURIE AIX
In 1999, students at RWTH Aachen University had the idea of founding a Formula Student team. The plan was realised the very next year with Ecurie Aix. In the name of the team, which pays homage to the nearby Spa-Francorchamps race track, the French word for racing team, Ecurie, is combined with Aix-la Chapelle, the French name for Aachen. In 2002, Ecurie Aix was one of the first German teams to take part in Formula Student. Since then, new cars have been built every two years. In 2010, the team competed in the new Formula Student Electric with its first electric car. Since 2014, Ecurie Aix has exclusively built racing cars with electric drive systems, and since 2017 also electric cars for the autonomous competition class.