AMZ News - AMZ Driverless

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AMZ News - AMZ Driverless
AMZ News
DRIVERLESS - THE NEXT STEP

                                        «gotthard» driverless showrun
                                                  © AMZ, Fabio Meier

                             Preparations for the autonomous test drive
                                                               © AMZ
AMZ News - AMZ Driverless
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                                                                                                                                 AMZ Rollout
                                                                                                                           © AMZ, Fabio Meier

     Rollout                                    ced the arrival of a reloaded «gotthard»         On 17th May, the team presents their
                                                waiting to zoom ahead autonomously.          first cost event. The cost event was
       On the morning of 14th May 2018,                                                      appreciated by the judges for the orga-
    the EKZ Dietikon campus is abuzz with        ZF Race Camp                                nisation and presentation, with valuable
    activity and excitement. The dynamic                                                     feedback given on the cost report.
    team of AMZ driverless is busy practi-          The ZF Race Camp lasted from 16-
    cing the trajectory tests of the car and    18 May, and was packed full of both             On the evening of 18th May, the team
    ensuring that the hardware and the soft-    static events and testing on the test        was suited up in their white AMZ polos
    ware integration of «gotthard» driverless   track. With over 600 students from elec-     and ready to present the Autonomous
    is working reliably. As the day progres-    tric, combustion and driverless teams        Design event. With each team member
    ses, the entire team convenes around        from many countries, the AMZ Driver-         eager to explain their work modules, the
    the car and does the final rounds of        less team was enthusiastic to showca-        judges were impressed with the profes-
    hardware checks before the car is           se gotthard. In addition to testing on       sionalism and technical preparation for
    showcased to the public.                    a large test track, this event gave the      the event. Their feedback on the overall
                                                team experience in organising themsel-       presentation and work package discus-
       At 6pm, the gathered audience are        ves in an event, presenting some of the      sions will ensure that the team is even
    given a visual treat of the splendid ra-    static disciplines, and interacting with     more prepared for the next events.
    cing cars produced by AMZ since the         other teams.
    beginning of the season in September                                                        A large test track was available on
    2017. A presentation follows explaining        There was a spirit of community and       which the team gathered important data
    the various building blocks of transfor-    sharing between the Formula Student          for further testing. One of the highlights
    ming «gotthard» into a driverless car.      teams, as everyone is willing to help if     was to see gotthard perceive the cones
                                                another team needs a specific tool, ma-      and navigate autonomously through the
       After this wonderful presentation, the   terial, or even just a bite to eat. During   track while being pushed manually.
    moment everyone was waiting for finally     the day, teams showcased their cars in
    arrived. The show run of the driverless     a large hall, where each team had a de-         At the end of the race camp, the
    «gotthard» is well appreciated with the     dicated area to continue work and pre-       team has gained technical knowledge
    car following a fixed trajectory without    parations on their car.                      through the feedback from experts,
    any deviation. With this, AMZ announ-                                                    has understood how a formula student
AMZ News - AMZ Driverless
«gotthard»
                                                                                                                         © Kreutzweise

    event functions, has nurtured friend-    integration tests were done to prove       velocity sensor. This year’s innovation
ly relationships with other teams and is     that the different components of the       lies in using the LiDAR point cloud to
even more inspired to push harder to         system work together smoothly, time is     additionally identify the colour of the
deliver a high quality formula student       spent improving the performance. This      cones. The vision pipeline consists of a
racing car.                                  process will continue until the season     stereo camera configuration to detect
                                             is completed and we have reached our       cones at short range, and a mono ca-
   We would like to thank ZF once            goals.                                     mera to detect cones farther away.
again for hosting and organising such
an amazing event!                               This year’s team goals are to maximi-      The design concepts and algorithms
                                             se points in competitions, by comple-      to drive the sensors were developed af-
 Along the way                               ting all disciplines and decreasing lap    ter many iterations and reviews by the
                                             time.                                      team and the experienced AMZ alum-
    The road to developing an auto-                                                     ni. Robustness and safety have been
nomous car involves testing on many           «gotthard» reloaded                       given due deliberation while designing
levels. The first real milestone was the                                                the autonomous system. «gotthard» is
completion of the new and improved              Driverless 2018 revived «gotthard»,     going to compete at some of the toug-
low-voltage system, which accommo-           the car built by the AMZ Electric team     hest competitions and is therefore built
dates all the new sensors. Once all the      in 2016. The team is starting with a car   with high quality code which is rigoro-
lights blink on, it’s as if «gotthard» has   that has proved itself; «gotthard» came    usly tested. For this purpose, professi-
new life. At the same time, the enginee-     1st overall in FSE Austria, and 2nd in     onal practices such as automated code
rs were hard at work on completing a         FSE Spain. Hardware modifications          testing and agile product management
baseline version of the software pipe-       include a newly designed high-volta-       tools have been adopted.
line.                                        ge accumulator, additional sensors for
                                             perception, and actuators for steering        The team also focuses on creating a
    The so-called “push-test” was the        and braking. The low-voltage electrical    software platform that can be used by
first time that «gotthard» steered au-       system underwent modifications to ac-      AMZ Driverless teams in future years.
tonomously, following a simulated tra-       commodate the new functionality and
jectory blindly (i.e. without perception).   incorporate an improved safety system.
However, at this stage «gotthard» still
needs a little push, as the high vol-           To empower it with autonomous ca-
tage system is still in progress. Next,      pabilities, «gotthard» has been reloaded
perception was added by including the        with several sensors such as the LiDAR,
cameras and LiDAR. Once most of the          cameras, a GPS system and an optical
AMZ News - AMZ Driverless
Testing at Alpnach
                                                                                                                          © AMZ, Sonja Brits

 Driverless team 2018                        in both Static and Dynamic disciplines.       le and safe autonomous racing car. It is
                                             With one Formula Student Driverless           this very reason which enabled them to
    The 2018 team brings diversity, in       season behind the back, expectations          win the overall trophy at FSG Driverless,
terms of both nationality and skillset.      for the 2018 teams are set even higher.       along with awards for coming first in En-
Students are mostly busy studying their                                                    gineering Design, cost award, coming in
masters degree at ETH Zurich in the              This year, a total of 350 out of the      second in autonomous design and third
fields of Computer Science, Mechanical       1000 competition points are achievable        in Business plan categories. Therefore,
Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and     in the trackdrive event alone, making it      the 2017 AMZ Driverless team has set
Robotics. The 20 students in the 2018        one of the most important (and exciting)      the bar very high, and the AMZ Driver-
team come from over 11 nationalities,        events. It has become even more de-           less 2018 team is determined to keep
including India, Italy, Lichtenstein, Ger-   manding this year since teams are no          the AMZ flag flying high.
many, South Africa, Spain, Netherlands,      longer allowed to capture GPS data of
and Thailand.                                the track with a so-called “track-walk”        Conclusion
                                             before starting the race. Hence the cars
   This year, AMZ Driverless will be         must find their way through an unknown           A season of intensive brainstorming,
competing in the Formula Student Dri-        map and control its motors autono-            hard work and team building lies ahead,
verless competitions in both Germany         mously, completely replacing the driver.      but the team is positive that they will
and Italy.                                   Already last year, the challenge proved       achieve their goals and make a success
                                             to be extremely tough, with few teams         of Driverless 2018.
 Second year of driverless                   completing a full lap.
                                                                                             The AMZ Driverless team would not
  In 2017, Formula Student Driverless         Looking back                                 be able to develop their car without their
was introduced for the first time. The                                                     sponsors and partners, and therefore
new division of Formula Student pushed          The AMZ Driverless team of 2017            we would like to thank them for their
aspiring engineers to develop an auto-       did a remarkable job of transitioning a       support!
nomous race car that could compete           powerful beast like ‘fluela’ into a reliab-
AMZ News - AMZ Driverless
ZF Race Camp
         © ZF
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