PittRace: Inaugural Sessions of Testing

On October 6th and October 20th, a few members of our team took time out of their busy Fridays to make the journey to the Pittsburgh International Race Complex to formally put last year’s car, CMR 17e, through its paces and collect valuable test data. We conducted tests of all dynamic events, including acceleration, skidpad, autocross, and endurance, and had some fun in the process. We were able to push our electrical and mechanical systems to the extremes, and measure the limits of our system. Using our new Memorator CAN logging device, provided to us by Kvaser, we were able to record every signal on our vehicle network for in depth analysis. Our next steps will be working to comb through the plethora of data collected during the tests in order to gain valuable insight into our vehicle’s performance and improve our design. Effective analysis of this data is made possible by the CANape software donated to us by Vector; images of some of our data visualizations can bee seen below. Analyzing the performance last season’s car will be essential for improving our vehicle’s dynamics this season, and will drive changes to the suspension systems and to the drive control algorithms. Pitt Race has been a great venue for testing our car, and has given us the best data we have ever collected from our vehicles. We look forward to taking 17e back to the track, and taking 18e in the spring.

Thanks again to our sponsors, whose generous support made this testing possible:

• Pittsburgh International Race Complex for allowing us free use of their facilities.

• Kvaser for providing us with a Memorator Pro CAN logging device

• Vector for providing us with licenses of their CANape software for viewing and analyzing CAN data.