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TI Stellaris Launchpads in Formula Student Electric Racing Car

moritz.roesel
Prodigy 30 points

Hi TI-community!

We proudly present the Delta Racing DR14-E - an electric high performance racing car for the Formula Student competition, built by students at the University of Applied Sciences in Mannheim, Germany. It was presented yesterday in our "rollout-event" together with its combustion engine (and fully aerodynamic) equipped brother DR14-C.

Some key facts of the car:

  • Power: 2x 50kW nominal (rear left and right wheel driven independantly)
  • Weight: 280kg
  • Tubular Steel Frame with carbon fibre chassis
  • Battery: LiFePO4-Battery Pack (stores 5.6kWh) and Battery Management System
  • Distributed Sensor network using CAN-Bus
  • WiFi Telemetry System
  • Driver Information System with 4.3" Touchscreen in steering wheel

The sensor network is completely based on TI Stellaris Launchpads. We developed booster packs and use the Launchpads as robust and reliable microcontroller platform to evaluate sensor data, check plausiblitly and send/receive data via CAN. We use 4 Stellaris Launchpads in our car.

This is our sensorboard for the pedals, where torque pedal position and brake pressures plus several other values are measured, checked and transmitted via CAN. It's is also used to measure front wheel speed and control the cockpit switches and lights for the driver.

And here's our gyro board to measure the vehicle's yaw rate, also connected via CAN:

The fourth Launchpad is used as battery management master processor. It reads and monitors all 80 battery cell values from the BMS slave devices and enables cell balancing while charging.

The vehicle, electronics and software is self developed by our team and the vehicle will compete with other teams from all over the world in August at the Formula Student Event in Czech Republic.

This is what we do with TI Launchpads - and we love these little boards. Driver Library makes it easy to programm, lots of calculation power and CAN is built in - a perfect fit for our application.

Best wishes from Germany!

Moritz from Delta Racing Mannheim

  • Guru 47900 points

    Guys/gals - simply Awesome!   Congratulations on your achievement.

    Might you (briefly) detail the positioning of the 4.3" TFT?   (we suspect that it "floats" - thus does not rotate w/steering wheel rotation)  Photo of that screen mount & sample screens would be welcome.

    Our small firm would love to visit (likely contribute) and wish your dedicated team the best...

  • in reply to cb1
    Prodigy 30 points

    Hi cb1!

    Thanks for the kind words!

    The display is a 4.3 inch transflective touch display from Densitron, which is controlled by a self designed processor board. Both Board and display are mounted inside the steering wheel in a 3D printed housing. The connections to CAN and supply are done through connectors inside the steering wheel quick release system.

    The board has a CAN interface, microSD card data logging, a Wifi-module, external flash and a external display controller module. We measure the steering wheel angle but don't rotate the screen yet. This could be a future project.

    This is the Display Board:

    It is equipped with a PIC32 microcontroller since this board was created before we decided to use Stellaris Boards. Otherwise it would probably have a Stellaris too.

    Every visit or contribution is always welcome in our project (a good chance to say "Thank you TI" for the great sample service!) ;-)

    Best  Wishes

    Moritz

  • in reply to cb1
    Guru 47900 points

    Thanks for your follow-up - appreciated.  Believe your future migration to, "all ARM" will prove worthwhile.

    May not have been clear/precise enough in listing our concern about the, "placement and physical stability of your TFT Display."  It seems reasonable that the TFT is fixed - that it is substantially centered w/in the steering wheel - but  physically, "floats." (i.e. does not rotate with the steering wheel while steering.  As you may imagine - actual rotation of the display - while steering - would reduce display usability - we believe)  And yes - especially during long, declining radius curves (taken at speed) - clear/quick dash observation proves useful.

    Our firm designed an all digital dash for Ferrari back in the early '80's.  The orange/glowing displays shown are, "Plasma Bar-Graphs" there are also vacuum fluorescent and uber-bright Leds - on that panel.  We have several remaining - they all still work.  BTW - model in question was a 308-GT4...

    Dash shown directly, "plugged-in" to the the vehicle's panel.  Some features were: KPH/MPH Speedo w/peak/average memory; Circular-Sweep (120 bar) Tach w/dual digit readout; RTClock + Timer (trip), 0-60, 0-100MPH, (0-"direct to jail" as option); keypad Start + Security + alarm set for fuel, distance, time, red-line etc.  Should be stated that this dash was fixed - did not/could not "fit" w/in steering wheel - thus avoided any/all "anti-rotate" challenges... 

    Ten years or later thereafter - our group was selected to produce a custom display panel which flew (successfully) w/in the Space Shuttle.  University of Alabama @ Huntsville was the prime contractor - somewhere we have a photo - not as well populated as yours - but surprisingly similar...  (your success/photo triggered memories...)

    Today our group produces various control panels - some still vehicular in nature - thus our curiosity as to, "if and how" you may have solved the, "anti-rotation" of the display - when mounted at/near/within the steering wheel.

    Small world - made smaller via high-speed (always legal) autobahn explorations...

  • TI__Guru**** 244380 points

    Hello Moritz,

    Congratulations to your team and a definitive go-go-go for the upcoming event in Czech Republic.

    Since you have used a lot of the peripherals, we would be glad to have you responding to our TI community posts, helping others out...

    But not to take away the pride of the moment... Congrats and All the Best...

    Regards

    Amit

  • Guru 85815 points

    Wow, this is amazing. Congratulations ! ! !

    I hope we can also have this competition in Asia. 

    Moritz R��sel said:
    This is our sensorboard for the pedals, where torque pedal position and brake pressures plus several other values are measured,

    I have a noob question.

    I assume the torque pedal is the gas pedal. Why do you need to measure it's position. A standard car don't have this "measuring torque pedal position".

    - kel

  • in reply to Markel Robregado
    TI__Guru** 118090 points

    Congratulations. 

    Curious about your propulsion. Brushed, induction, or bldc/pmsm? Any rotor sensors? Did you do the inverter and control yourself, or are you using an off the shelf solution? 

    I saw one of these at SPS Drives last year. Very fun project And thanks for sharing!

  • in reply to ChrisClearman
    Prodigy 30 points

    Hi Chris!

    The motors are watercooled PMSM machines with motor position resolver and the inverters are off-the-shelf. In future cars we might go for self built inverters but that's a long way to go, especially since this is our very first electrical racing car.

    @Markel:

    The gas/torque pedal position must be measured because we have no mechanical throttle wire like a combustion engine. The driver sets the reference value for the motor torque with the gas pedal position, this is measured with the Launchpad, routed through plausibility checks and vehicle dynamic control algorithms and then sent to the inverters via CAN, which produce the desired torque at the motors.

  • in reply to moritz.roesel
    TI__Guru** 118090 points

    Moritz R��sel said:
    The motors are watercooled PMSM machines with motor position resolver and the inverters are off-the-shelf.

    Are you doing any of the commutation control of the inverter, or just sending torque or speed commands to the drive (controller + inverter)?

    Moritz R��sel said:
    In future cars we might go for self built inverters but that's a long way to go, especially since this is our very first electrical racing car.

    Absolutely!  This is a very challenging area which requires extremely high expertise. I would have been shocked if you had done your own inverter controller!