Testing @ Hoosier Super Tour

The weekend started with nothing but rain but we ended up with mostly clear weather for qual and racing. I was scheduled to have both my T1 and T2 cars available, but due to some parts delays we had to settle for running just the T2 car. In reality this was a a good thing because it gave me plenty of time to tune TCAS for a challenging environment.

If you haven't been on track at Watkins Glen, you probably dont realize how close the barriers are (the infamous blue bushes). These blue bushes present a challenge for ultrasonic sensors as they produce reflections that can confuse the system.

A good portion of my sessions on track were spent observing the display and staring at my mirrors trying to make sure that everything was calibrated correctly (I made no fewer than 4 changes to the ultrasonic calibration over the course of the weekend).

The good news is that I'm finally happy with the calibration, and I truly believe we didn't give anything up in sensitivity to make the system work in this challenging environment. Check out this video which shows off the system (ultrasonic calibration wasnt quite finished here but it was close to final, the newest calibration features faster overlap detection but I dont have any close passes to illustrate it on video).

As for my finishing position, I wish I could say we had another podium finish but competition was stiff and I finished P6 and P7 this weekend. Had a fun battle with those in front and behind (aided by TCAS) but couldn't

quite run up front.

TCAS can help you *WIN* more races

If your anything like me, you LOVE racing. People who love racing also love to win, thankfully our competitors don't make this easy for us or it would be a hollow victory. This however puts us in a situation where we are running door->door or nose->tail with our competition looking for that tiny gap we can squeeze through, or if your lucky enough to be in front trying your best not to leave the door open. I've talked before about TCAS being a tool for enhancing your situational awareness, some people might interpret this as just being used to know when and where your going to be passed. I have always envisioned TCAS as a system that lets me race HARDER *and* safer.

Let's use a recent race at NJMP Lightning that I lost by 0.05 (yes 5 hundredths of a second), I started my pass in T2, went door to door with another Corvette until T5 (over the hill) when he just flat out vanished on me, since I was on the inside of the corner I instinctively thought he went to the outside and tried to pass me back on the outside. In the video you can see me looking for him on my left multiple times. This loss of situational awareness caused me to compromise my trackout (and thus EXIT speed) for T5 and eventually lost me the position (nearly got it back on the final turn of the final lap but I had to settle for P2). If the car had been running TCAS I would have seen two distinct things, #1 No overlap on drivers left, #2 indication that an object was closing from the rear. This would have told me it was safe to track out normally and maintain my momentum. I'm no PRO racer, but I think thats worth 0.05 seconds.. :) For those interested in spending a minute of your life watching the story on video, please see below.

TCAS Field test #1

Sunday was the first opportunity to bring the new TCAS system to the race track. I am happy to report that with minimal trackside programming and hardware modification we hit our design targets. > 10 car length detection of approaching traffic and accurate closing speed notification. Since we were not under race conditions it was difficult to test overlap sensors, but the system is on the car and headed to the Hoosier Super Tour at WGI in a few days. In other news we discovered that the glass transition temperature of 3D printed PLA is absolutely too low for license plate mounting of the radar modules. Our next prototype parts are going to be done in ABS plastic before we go to production aluminum brackets.

See below for a demonstration. The radar picks up the Ferrari pretty much as soon as he starts gaining time on me out of T5, blue lights in the center of the LED screen. It doesn't lose track of him until he gets along side me. The overlap detectors should have picked him up there but they were tuned only to notify within 4 feet which was too close for non-race conditions, I will be turning up the sensitivity for WGI this week.