What is EUFS?
Edinburgh University Formula Student is a student society that builds self-driving race cars from scratch. We then compete these race cars in the yearly competition in Silverstone, England (where they race the F1 🤓) against teams from all over Europe. The society played a big part of life at University.
What Do I Do at EUFS?
Currently, I’m working on using Machine Learning for global path optimisation. More on that to come…
Previously at Formula Student:
In my first year, I was part of the Statics sub-team. When we want to Silverstone, we got awarded the best presentation they’d seen that year. We presented on:
- The Risks of Bias in Black Box Self-Driving Models
- Neuro-symbolic AI as a Safety-First Learning Algorithm
- World’s Readiness for SAE Level 4
Presenting our RWAI presentation
What Actually Is Formula Student:
It’s a competition in Silverstone that’s split into 2 sides, ADS (Autonomous Driving System) and DDT (Dynamic Driver Tasks) → Think self-driving and driver-yes cars respectively. EUFS is one of the only teams in the UK that’s building a car that can be driven by people and self-drive as well (Dubbed the ADS Car).
ADS (Driverless):
This side focuses on writing the software that allows a car (normally one that the IMechE provides) to drive itself. Our software team is split into several parts, including localisation and mapping, planning and control, perception and more. (This is essentially the stack that runs on self-driving car companies).
For the RL path optimisation, I’m working quite closely with planning and control and simulation.
ADS Challenges:
To prove you’d made something somewhat decent, they put your software through the ringer with a battery of tests. Everything from driving on unseen tracks (as fast as possible) to essentially drag races (measuring start-top speed-stop times).
Our software competing on the IMechE car. (We won ;) )
DDT (Driver-yes):
This part builds the race-car from scratch. For a bunch of reasons, the actual building of the race-car hasn’t been our strength (we’ve not submitted a working car while I’ve been at University - yet…). But there is hope.
Reflection
I’m incredibly grateful I joined EUFS in 1st year. Made great friends and learned the importance of good inspirational leadership - lessons I then took to EdinburghAI. Also, got some sick photos. Credit to good friend Nikita:
