Team Cardiff Autonomous Racing
Cardiff Autonomous Racing is Cardiff University’s self-driving technology hub. The Autonomous Team develop and deploy software on a full-scale autonomous vehicle to compete in the IMechE Driverless competition at Silverstone.
Cardiff Autonomous Racing provides a fantastic opportunity for the next generation of autonomous systems engineers to gain the skills and experience that are highly desired by those in industry.
The team is made up of members from various engineering disciplines and years, as well as computer science students. Students volunteer to join the team, but you can also request to complete a research project with the team as part of your final year project.
Developing skills that could change your career
Shahab is the Cardiff Autonomous Team Leader and a recent mechanical engineering graduate. He has been working with the team for four years and has gained plenty of new skills that have allowed him to pursue an exciting career in a different field to his degree.
“I’m responsible for team finances, from attracting new sponsors and partners to managing the team budget. I also manage the business team which is responsible for all non-technical aspects of the project, such as growing our online presence and preparing the business plan and presentations. It's a varied job and involves communication with all areas of the team and other teams around the UK.
Joining the team has had a big impact on me. I studied a mechanical engineering degree, but with the skills I’ve picked up through the team and my placement, I’ve secured a job as a software developer and data analyst.”
Some of the other team members have also pursued exciting careers after their experience in the AI team. Harrison Mutai, a medical engineering student, was introduced to AI and able to develop his team coding skills, he now works for ARM. George Kenny, a computer science student, was able to explore different areas of software development, such as simulations and graphical based simulators, and now works for Amazon. Paige Pasigan, another computer scientist who now works at Awen Collective, worked on the localisation aspect of the system using her expertise in cyber security to help the AI team.
Working with new technologies
This year, Shahab has led the development of a simulator and a demo car – a scaled-down version of a car to help with modelling and movement. He explains some of the latest technologies that the students on the Autonomous Racing team get to work with.
“The big one is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is the framework for vision-based depth perception, also known as stereo vision. The team also uses AI in the car’s MPPI system, this is the part of the system which maps out the different trajectories and predicts and chooses the best paths for the moving vehicle.
If you’re interested in working with hardware, the team also get to use microprocessors and controllers such as Raspberry Pis, Arduinos and Jetson Nanos.
We run simulations using our own simulator built in Unreal Engine – it’s a popular game engine that’s used to build computer games like Fortnite.”
The Formula Student Artificial Intelligence (FS-AI) competition
FS-AI challenges university teams to build and develop the driving systems to run a fully autonomous vehicle.
Teams compete in a trio of static events similar to the main Formula Student competition, with a design and business plan presentation, but also with a real-world autonomous event where teams must demonstrate their understanding and practical solutions for the integration of autonomous vehicles as a future transport solution. In addition, teams must complete a series of autonomous missions, with acceleration, skid pad, and endurance events. These demonstrate teams’ technical knowledge and understanding as well as the effectiveness of their autonomous driving systems.
Find out more about Cardiff Autonomous Racing at their website and follow their social media channels for the latest team updates @cardiffacing on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and LinkedIn.
