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In 1987, The U.S. Department of Energy began sponsoring Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTC). More than 16,000 students from more than 600 institutions in North America have participated in one of these hands-on learning opportunities. To date, there have been more than 45 different competitions. Take a moment to reflect back on some of the competitions over the years and look how far we’ve come!
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Tags: Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition, Challenge X, EcoCAR, FutureTruck, General Motors
This week’s Where Are They Now post features Brandon Tarbert, a long-time Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition (AVTC) participant. Starting as an undergraduate at The Pennsylvania State University, Brandon was looking to get involved with things that interested him. He was told as a freshman that the best way to end up in a career he loved was to get involved in an extracurricular activity in college. One evening when Brandon was out with friends, he met the school’s Challenge X team leader and heard all about the competition. Brandon had a nascent interest in hybrid vehicles and clean energy and thought it could be an exciting opportunity.
Starting in Year One, Brandon began working with Penn State’s Advanced Vehicle Technologies (AVT) team to promote Challenge X throughout the campus and to local news media. As the competition progressed, Brandon and the AVT team worked with other sustainable groups around campus to promote sustainable living.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communications from Penn State, Brandon was hired by Sentech, Inc. as a communications analyst for the U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Program. At the DOE, Brandon managed communications and web development. He worked with engineers to promote the research and development pursued at the DOE’s national laboratories focused on advanced vehicle technologies. Brandon also supported the logistics, planning, and judging for EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge.
Brandon really enjoyed working with the EcoCAR students, but is currently fulfilling a two-year service with the Peace Corps in the Republic of Benin, a country in West Africa. We wish Brandon the best during his service and look forward to his return!
Brandon teaching in West Africa
Tags: Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition, Brandon Tarbert, Challenge X, DOE, EcoCAR, Penn State
The Georgia Tech EcoCAR team just ended their third week at the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds. During the first week, the team overcame several issues that got them to the point where they could try to start the EcoCAR’s engine. However after turning it over, the team noticed that it was not producing torque. It had been broken and they had to replace it. On Georgia Tech’s second trip, team members had to replace the engine, which involved taking out all the components in the whole front end of the car. By the end of the second trip, they still had to resolve some mechanical issues before trying to run the engine. On the most recent trip to the Proving Grounds, the team fixed the mechanical issues and were able to spin the EcoCAR’s wheels using only electrical motors for the first time after reinstalling the whole front end of the car. On the final day, GM helped Georgia Tech turn on its engine and watch the state of charge go up, showing that the battery pack was charged with the engine.
With GM’s analysis of the team’s vehicle data, they hope to discover what adjustments need to be made so they can reliably control when the engine turns on and to finally start driving the vehicle. Georgia Tech is very appreciative of the invaluable assistance and education that GM has provided to them; not only during their time in Milford, but throughout the entire competition. They look forward to getting the car back to Atlanta and gearing up for Year Three of the competition!
Tags: EcoCAR, electrical motor, engine, GM, GM Proving Grounds
Yesterday marked the biggest outreach event that the UW Hybrid Team had ever experienced! The American Le Mans Series, the world’s leading sports car series focused on being a global trendsetter in “green” racing, visited the University of Wisconsin, Madison at the Capitol square. The event was presented by Tequila Patrón and was designed to promote the technologies and alternative fuels necessary to enable competitive motorsports to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions in race vehicles. These exciting technologies are being researched by universities across the country and then put to the test in grueling race competitions by the American Le Mans Series manufacturers and teams. Examples of these next-generation race cars, including Drayson Racing’s Lola B09/60 Judd and the Green Earth Team Gunnar’s ORECA-FLM 09 prototype, were on display.
The presentation was open to the public and included the following invited guests: Governor Jim Doyle, Representative Steve Kestell and Senator Joseph Leibham. The event also featured Series drivers, Gunnar Jeannette, Joey Hand and Rahal Letterman. Last but certainly not least, UW’s EcoCAR team leader, Stacey Ley, and advisor, Glenn Bower, both presented about the EcoCAR competition and advanced vehicle technologies.
What a great experience, congratulations UW!
Tags: advanced vehicle technology, American Le Mans Series, EcoCAR, Hybrid, Jim Doyle
Today, we are sharing Part Two of the interview with Paul Smith from the MathWorks. In Part One of the interview we learned about Paul’s role in the EcoCAR competition and what set Ohio State apart from the other teams in Year Two. Paul shared some great insights, so check out the rest of the conversation below!
Q: What was your most memorable moment from the Year Two Finals events in San Diego?
A: During the presentation from Mississippi State University when Will Dickerson, the student presenting to our judging panel said “we couldn’t have done this without Stateflow.” The MSU team had a really detailed understanding of some of the more subtle features and applied them to the great benefit of the team. MSU went on to win the overall EcoCAR competition in Year Two.
Q: In what ways have you seen the teams change from Year One to Year Two? How have their skills developed? Any particular teams achieve outstanding/unique growth?
A: What has impressed me the most is how the teams continue to build upon the legacy of modeling, simulation and analysis expertise that they’ve developed at their schools over the years. Models are a fantastic way to capture the design intent and pass that knowledge along to future generations of students they may never even meet. Future generations can quickly look at the models and develop an abstract understanding of what the design is trying to accomplish. This just doesn’t work with hand written code. Furthermore, the use of multi-domain modeling for modeling the physical systems just wasn’t present in the competition until a few years ago. Rose-Hulman has been a pioneer in this area and has shared their ideas with the other teams by running sessions at our workshop in the fall.
Additionally, the incorporation of students from other disciplines (business, economics, marketing) that manage overall projects or develop the teams’ outreach programs. Some of the teams’ outreach programs are rich with various social media exposure, high school and elementary school interactions, tremendous web presences and the list goes on. As any member of a major automotive OEM knows, it’s not just about the math and science. Successfully building and operating in a team environment is essential to getting things done. This has been a great growth area.
Q: As we enter the final year of the challenge, what advice do you have for the students? What challenges lie ahead that they might not be anticipating?
A: Year Two was about getting the vehicle to move. Year Three is all about refinement. It is key to keep using simulation to validate new ideas to refine the controls or hardware or to add on new degrees of control freedom. You can break the vehicle in simulation as often as you want, but you can only break the physical vehicle once!
I would also suggest that the student engineers take full advantage of the offers for support and mentorship from the sponsors. These are industry experienced engineers that have learned from the school of hard knocks. A smart student will learn from their own mistakes, a wise one will learn from others’ mistakes.
Q: What’s next for MathWorks and EcoCAR?
A: We are actively planning the details of the EcoCAR Fall Workshop: September 29 – October 3, 2010 to be held at our campus in Natick, MA. We will offer a three track learning solution to accommodate new comers and old timers alike. We’re also planning some things just for the faculty advisors to help them on their quest to integrate the concepts of Model-Based Design into their classroom and curriculum.
We’ll continue to provide the resources of our mentors to the teams and we are looking forward to supporting the future of Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions as those plans come together.
Tags: EcoCAR, Engineering, Mathworks, Model-based Design, Ohio State, simulation
MathWorks is a Platinum Sponsor for the EcoCAR Challenge and has been involved in Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTCs) for many years. For each competition, MathWorks donates software for Model-Based Design and delivers intensive training to all student teams and faculty advisors during the fall workshops. Additionally, the company provides experienced automotive industry engineers as mentors who work closely with students. Part of MathWorks’ mission is to give back to the communities in which the team lives and works, using its engineering and education expertise. In the following interview, Paul Smith, Director of Consulting Services for MathWorks, talks about EcoCAR and how the competition is a convergence of both engineering and education. Paul also congratulates all of the teams for their hard work and dedication to date.
Q: What is your role in EcoCAR? How does EcoCAR compare to other student competitions you’re involved with?
A: My day job is Director of Consulting Services but I also act as MathWorks technical lead engineer for the EcoCAR competition. I help design the support structure MathWorks provides to the competition organizers, faculty advisors and student engineers. I also have the great privilege of participating in the judging of various elements of the annual competitions and MathWorks Modeling Award. While previous student engineering competitions focused primarily on hardware modifications and some add-on control systems based around rapid prototyping platforms, EcoCAR includes a unique focus on modeling and simulation, within engineering education as well physical vehicle development. The early focus on desktop and Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation based testing provides a safe platform to let engineers do what they do best – develop and try out new ideas. The shifting focus to developing the next generation automotive engineer has taken the program to a whole new level. The competition gives the students a really tremendous opportunity to learn how industry works and uses the same, albeit scaled down, development process GM uses. When they graduate, they are finding multiple job offers in the current jobs market. This is a great testament to the tremendous value participation in this program has both for the student and the company that hires them.
Q: What is MathWorks Crossover to Model Based Design and what are the judging criteria?
A: The Crossover to Model-Based Design Award recognizes EcoCAR teams that exhibit the most creative application of MathWorks software products to help achieve the competition’s overall objectives. Those objectives include, from a high level, reduction of the environmental impact of automobiles by improving fuel efficiency and reducing emissions, while retaining the vehicle’s performance and consumer appeal. Basically, the student engineers are working on removing the automobile from the debate on environmental impact using industrial grade development process and tools.
The MathWorks award focuses a bit more narrowly on the application of our software as part of the overall competition and points were awarded to team in a number of areas including plant modeling, controls design, validation & verification, tuning, data analysis, visualization, and hardware implementation through automatic code generation. Extra credit is given for uses of MATLAB for analysis of engineering challenges outside the boundary of the vehicle that are part of the overall energy equation.
Q: What set Ohio State University apart from the other 15 teams this year?
A: The Ohio State University made extensive use of our physical modeling tools like SimScape and SimPowerSystems, Simulink, Stateflow, Control Design, and Optimization tools. They performed signal processing to examine high frequency high voltage effects. They used models to determine vehicle fusing and cooling requirements, and used Report Generator to produce summary reports to satisfy competition delvierables. They built a standalone engine controller from the ground up in Simulink (most teams command torque through a CAN interface to a black box to control engines). They have two simulation environments they’ve built called EcoSym and EcoDyn based on Simulink for static and dynamic analysis and design of their powertrain and related controls. Overall, OSU has built upon a rich tradition of Model-Based Design competency instilled by their faculty advisor, Georgio Rizzoni and clearly demonstrated to our judging panel that they were the team that set the standard for application of our tooling solutions.
Interested in Paul’s advice for the students heading into Year Three of the competition? And what is in store for MathWorks and EcoCAR? Check back here tomorrow for Part Two of Paul’s interview with the Inside the Green Garage blog!
Tags: EcoCAR, Engineering, Mathworks, Model-based Design, Paul Smith
Since receiving vehicle performance results at the Year Two Finals, the NC State EcoCAR team has been hard at work testing its vehicle and making necessary adjustments to achieve the best results possible. To kick off Year Three, the team held an outreach event for local students enrolled in a Renewable Energy Technology pre-college program. The high school students were given an overview of the EcoCAR competition and and the opportunities the program makes possible. After the presentation, the NC State team then gave the group a tour of the garage to check out the EcoCAR. The students and teachers were excited to watch the vehicle operate on the gravel roads around the garage and on the garage vehicle lift to really get a feel for the Extended Range Electric Vehicle capabilities.
Pre-college students taking a look under the hood of NC State's EcoCAR
On the technical side, NC State team members are currently working on different projects to get their EcoCAR running smoothly focused on improving the feel of electric motor regenerative breaking, acceleration and creep (the ability to move without either pedal depressed). In addition, the team is continuing its effort to run the diesel engine-generator unit before the next semester begins at NC State. The team is working to refine its EcoCAR in Year Three with plans to lighten the vehicle, improve the battery packaging for better rear seat and cargo space, and make it showroom-ready inside and out by the end of the competition.
Cool exterior!
Tags: biodiesel, EcoCAR, NC State, renewable energy, Year Three
The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) received a huge honor from EcoCAR sponsor, National Instruments (NI), this summer. Team members, Lynn Gantt and Michael Kearney, were invited to give part of the Academic Keynote For NIWeek 2010 in Austin and presented to more than 4,000 people from the industry, academic, and the technical community. This invitation was a result of Virginia Tech’s success in Year Two of the competition through the use of several National Instruments products, including LabVIEW, Veristand, and StateChart software and CompactRIO and PXI hardware. Winning the Best Use of Graphical System Design award from National Instruments also helped the team secure the role at the conference.
The team’s presentation covered the goals of EcoCAR, the vehicle architecture, control strategy, Hardware-In-the-Loop testing, and a hardware demo showing off the driver display created by the team and HIL testing – a lot to squeeze into a seven minute presentation! The hard work paid off and the presentation received strong applause from industry and academic professionals, and event organizers.
HEVT was joined on stage by Racing Green Endurance from Imperial College in London, England. Soon, they will be taking their student-built electric race car 26,000 km down the Pan-American highway from Alaska to the tip of South America. Another group from Virginia Tech, the Blind Driver Challenge Team out of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) also presented at the conference. This group of senior design students is working with NI and the National Federation for the Blind to develop a car that one day can be driven by the blind.
Check out the cool videos below from the NI Keynote address:
Tags: EcoCAR, HIL, LabVIEW, Virginia Tech
This week’s Mentor Monday post features Dale Klein, a GM mentor, who explains that his strategy for success in the workplace is all about making predictions. As an energy and drive quality engineer at GM, Dale uses computer models to predict fuel economy and performance in the early stages of vehicle production. In his first mentorship during the Challenge X competition, he passed this notion on to the students at University of Akron. And currently, the EcoCAR team at Ohio State University has benefited from Dale’s approach.
“I’ve helped teach the students to think things through ahead of time and anticipate if their vehicle will meet the competition requirements,” said Dale. ”That way, the students can respond to the judges’ questions even before they ask them. There are no surprises.”
In Year Two, the Ohio State EcoCAR team worked on completing their very complex hybrid powertrain system. “I have a ton of respect for the students. They chose a system that’s definitely not easy to build,” said Dale.
Dale Klein with the OSU EcoCAR team
Despite their challenging vehicle, the OSU team was able to run their car in electric-only mode and complete most of the events at the Year Two test drives in Yuma, AZ. In San Diego, they were awarded fifth place in the overall competition and scored well in the judges’ reports.
In Year Three of the EcoCAR challenge, Dale will continue to help his students focus on predictions, especially in terms of consumer criticisms. The students will spend most of their time debugging issues that they ran out of time for in Year Two: rewiring the inverter connections and engine harness, improving fuel economy, and refining consumer drive-ability.
“I’m confident that the students will make the vehicle live up to 110 percent of its potential,” said Dale.
To help them do this, he is planning to travel to Columbus at least once in the fall and again in early spring to advise the team in these final stages before the EcoCAR closing ceremonies next year in Washington, D.C.
“EcoCAR is great for the students because they get to work directly with big name companies like GM. And it’s really great for the companies, too, because we can put the best students to work immediately after graduation,” said Dale. “I wish I had something like this when I was in school!”
Tags: EcoCAR, Engineering, GM, hybrid powertrain, Ohio State University
President Spanier
The Penn State EcoCAR team is proud to share that the Penn State University president, Dr. Graham Spanier, spoke about the team and its efforts at the school’s most recent Board of Trustees meeting. President Spanier spoke highly of the EcoCAR team’s third place finish at the Year Two competition during his informational report. In his remarks, President Spanier said:
“Let me now highlight several initiatives where research meets education. Recently, a car designed by a Penn State student team won third place overall in the 2010 EcoCAR competition sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. The competition challenged university engineering students to re-engineer a GM-donated vehicle, with goals to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions while retaining the vehicle’s performance and consumer appeal. Sixteen teams competed and Penn State’s EcoCAR brought home 10 trophies, including best social media, best AVL driver quality and best technical report.”
President Spanier also spoke about the EcoCAR team at the State of the University Address last September. The Penn State team is thrilled to be recognized so highly by the president of its university. They hope to continue to make Dr. Spanier and the rest of our university proud in Year Three!
The PSU EcoCAR team at the Year Two Finals
Tags: EcoCAR, Engineering, GM, Graham Spanier, Penn State, Year Three