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Design of an Autonomous Race Car for the
Formula Student Driverless (FSD)
Marcel Zeilinger1, Raphael Hauk1, Markus Bader2 and Alexander Hofmann3
Abstract—Formula Student Germany is a race car com-
petition for student teams competing with self-designed, self-
developed and self-built vehicles. These cars have been com-
peting to win in various disciplines every year since 2006 at
the Hockenheimring in Germany. In 2016, a new discipline,
Formula Student Driverless, was announced for the following
year, targeting autonomous race cars that complete tracks of
5kmover 10 laps as fast as possiblewithout thehelp of human
racer pilots or remote control systems. This paper will cover
the framework, the sensor setup and the approaches used by
the Viennese racing teamTUWRacing.
I. INTRODUCTION
Formula Student Germany (FSG) is an international con-
struction competition for students with the aim of promoting
research in multiple disciplines on a concrete application.
The competition is divided into three classes: electric,
combustion and driverless vehicle. The last classification,
which has existed since 2017, is called Formula Student
Driverless (FSD), where either combustion or electric cars
arepermitted.Contrary to theother twoclasses, thedriverless
class rules permit the use of a team’s existing race car
which has already attended previous FSG race(s). Therefore,
formerly manually-driven race cars equipped with appropri-
ate sensors, actors and computing hardware can be adapted
to driverless cars. Nevertheless, vehicles have to comply
with the restrictions of their appropriate class; in particular,
manual operation must still be possible.
Regardless of the class in which a team participates, the
event itself is divided into static and dynamic disciplines, and
points can be scored in each discipline. In the static disci-
pline, a cost report and a business plan must be presented by
each team.Beforeacar is allowed toparticipate inadynamic
event, a technical inspection must be passed to ensure the
car is mechanically and electrically safe, in accordance with
the rules [3]. Since a car’s total score is comprised of both
disciplines, the fastest car need not necessarily win.
In the following sections TUW Racing will describe its
concept for participation in the FSD 2017. First, an overview
is provided of the solutions and academic approaches avail-
able in the area of autonomous driving, with regard to similar
1Marcel Zeilinger and Raphael Hauk are with TUW-
Racing, Adolf-Blamauergasse 1-3, 1030 Wien, Austria
firstname.lastname@racing.tuwien.ac.at
2Markus Bader is with the Automation Systems Group at Institute of
ComputerAidedAutomation,TUWien,Karlsplatz13,1040Vienna,Austria
firstname.lastname@tuwien.ac.at
3Alexander Hofmann is with the Institute of Com-
puter Science at the University of Applied Sciences FH
Technikum Wien, Ho¨chsta¨dtplatz 6, 1200 Vienna, Austria
firstname.lastname@technikum-wien.at Fig. 1. Racecar Edge8 from the previous season (2016) which has been
redesigned to drive autonomously
solutions in general mobile robotics. Then an overview of the
vehicle and the sensors, actuators, as well as the software
components used is provided. Furthermore, we will describe
our approach to the problems posed by the competition and
reflect upon its effectiveness up to this point.
II. RELATED WORK
In order to describe related work, time was invested in
studying competitions with a similar focus. In addition, stud-
ies were conducted on commercially available solutions to
autonomous driving such as the NVIDIA DRIVE1 products.
The Carolo Cup2 is a competition where student teams
build autonomous 1:10 sized cars, which have to cope with
reality-inspired driving situations faced by passenger cars
[12]. While there is a static competition in the form of a
concept presentation as well, the dynamic events consist of
parking and driving a free drive with and without obstacles.
During the free drive, the model car needs to master chal-
lenges like intersections, speed limits or dynamic obstacles
suchasothervehiclesorpassengerscrossing the track,which
is marked with white lines on a dark ground similar to real
road surface markings. In the paper [12], Technical Evalua-
tion of the Carolo-Cup 2014, the authors state under Lessons
Learned the importance of high quality hardware products
and the need for a robust computer vision algorithm in
detecting road markings. Similar to this competition are the
NXP Cup student competition, also known as the Freescale
1NVIDIA DRIVE http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive-px.html
2Carolo Cup: https://wiki.ifr.ing.tu-bs.de/carolocup/
51
Proceedings of the OAGM&ARW Joint Workshop
Vision, Automation and Robotics
- Title
- Proceedings of the OAGM&ARW Joint Workshop
- Subtitle
- Vision, Automation and Robotics
- Authors
- Peter M. Roth
- Markus Vincze
- Wilfried Kubinger
- Andreas MĂĽller
- Bernhard Blaschitz
- Svorad Stolc
- Publisher
- Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz
- Location
- Wien
- Date
- 2017
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-85125-524-9
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 188
- Keywords
- Tagungsband
- Categories
- International
- Tagungsbände