A look back at Formula Student 2023 with ARECE. 🏁
ARECE, the ECE student association 🚘
For several months now, we've been supporting ARECE, the ECE student association.
Their goal: to take part in the Formula Student international student competition in the autonomous vehicle category.
We decided to support ARECE first and foremost because it represents the first French Formula Student team, but also to support young, motivated and passionate engineers.
To achieve this, the ARECE team developed a vehicle specially for the competition: an ADS-DV for "Autonomous Driving Systems - Dedicated Vehicle" produced by IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers).
"The ADS-DV also features a Velodyne Puck lidar, a ZED 2.2k stereo camera, and an on-board computer with a Core i7 and GTX 1050 graphics card. A GPS is also on board. All these on-board electronics make it possible to implement in the on-board computer autonomous piloting software developed by ARECE in Open Source."
Formula Student 🛣️
In the Formula Student autonomous vehicle category, teams from different countries compete to design, build and test vehicles capable of following a course without human intervention.
Cars are assessed on performance, reliability, innovation and commercial potential through static and dynamic tests. The autonomous category arrived in England at the Silverstone circuit in 2019, but autonomous competition is also present in Austrian, German, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Swiss competitions.
The British competition is the only one to offer young teams the chance to share an autonomous car for their first competitions.
ARECE's participation in Formula Student ⚡️
Last July, the ARECE team set off for the British circuit for its first participation in Formula Student UK.
Here are their thoughts on the experience:
"This experience has been rich in many ways. Firstly, from a technical point of view: we managed to pass the autonomous vehicle inspections and thanks to this, we have the authorization to drive the car autonomously.
We're very proud of this achievement, not only because we're the first French team to do so, but also because none of the other teams were able to run their cars in their first year. So we've managed to get to the front of the pack on our very first appearance.
In addition, there were the static tests, which were presentations on technical subjects and on the model of a business plan.
With all that, we finished 10th!
Mais surtout nous avons pu récolter une quantité astronomique d’informations, que ce soit sur le plan technique afin d’améliorer nos simulations et notre vision du sujet, mais aussi dans l’organisation générale et dans notre planification de l’année à venir, afin de maximiser les résultats.
Finally, we were able to meet, discuss and exchange with other students who come from different universities and countries, which opened us up to new points of view, on a range of subjects, and we're using this, to maximize our progress in the years to come!" Adrien Bignon, Vice President External Relations ARECE.
Congratulations to the whole team, and see you next year for Formula 2024?
Find them right here!
