At the public presentation held on June 14 at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), the Estonian student formula team, FS Team Tallinn, presented two new vehicles they built themselves: a self-driving and a manned electric formula vehicle. Both formula vehicles also drove a few laps.
The student formula team consisting of almost 50 students from TTK University of Applied Sciences and Taltech has built a brand-new electric formula vehicle and developed new algorithms for the self-driving vehicle. The new algorithms permit mapping of the unknown surroundings of the track around the vehicle and make it faster. The updates to the electric formula vehicle have improved the lap times by 3 seconds.
Georg Kõivumägi, the captain of FS Team Tallinn said that the students make most of the vehicle themselves using the laboratories of both universities. The amount of purchased products and custom-made parts decreases every year. „The fact that we do these things ourselves is what sets us apart from several of our competitors with thicker wallets,” Kõivumägi stated.
The team will soon travel to Europe to defend their fifth place in the world ranking. They hope to return with a trophy at the end of the racing season.
Formula Student is an international product development competition primarily aimed at engineering students, where students design, build, and introduce a single-seat formula vehicle. The vehicles are assessed by an international high-level expert jury. The vehicle must undergo different tests and race on a circuit. Participating in the project gives the student real-life experience in vehicle design and manufacturing and introduces young engineers to the economic side of the car industry.
The partners of FS Team Tallinn are TTK University of Applied Sciences and TalTech. The main sponsor of the electric formula vehicle is ABB and of the self-driving vehicle is Äike. The gold sponsors of the team are Oshino Electronics, Milrem Robotics, and Harju Elekter. The silver sponsors are Radius Machining, Skeleton Technologies, Scanweld, FinestSteel, Uddeholm, SKF, Insero OÜ, Attila.
