Institution news
While difficulties over ensuring the safety of all those involved forced the cancellation of the 2020 Formula Student event at Silverstone, this July will see the UK Formula Student competition take place online.
The competition, which is organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, challenges the teams to use their creativity and technical skills to design, build and race single-seater cars and with more than 80 teams signed up to take part, the popularity and importance of the competition remains high.
“Despite the difficulties posed by COVID-19, it is essential that we continue to develop alternative opportunities for young engineers to develop their skills and gain experience of real-world projects. As engineers are natural problem-solvers, we look forward to seeing how our competitors adapt to the new challenges in this year’s virtual events” said Lucy Killington, Project Manager of the UK Formula Student competition.
Student teams will still be able to present the results of their hard work, with the Design, Cost & Manufacturing, Business and FS-AI presentation events taking place in much the same format as usual. While the traditional Dynamic Events will not take place owing to the lack of the live event, the organisers have opted for a two-part solution.
The Acceleration and Skid-Pad events will be replaced by Lap-Time Simulations that will use a Multi-Body Dynamics Model and recreations of the courses used at Silverstone. Secondly, online multiplayer competitive simulation races in Assetto Corsa will test the skills of its drivers, which mirrors the current popularity of e-sports racing.
New for this year is the Simulation Development competition, which will evaluate students’ understanding of simulation within the autonomous vehicle development workflow and demonstrate their self-driving algorithms in detail. This is especially important while teams cannot access physical hardware and with the low bar to entry it is hoped that more universities who had not previously been involved can now do so.
The Virtual Dynamic Events and Closing Ceremony on 25-26 July 2020 will be streamed online for engineers and Formula Student fans around the world to enjoy, to be updated on developments be sure to visit the Formula Student website or follow their Twitter, Facebook or Instagram social media channels.
WHEN: Wednesday 22 July – Sunday 26 July 2020. The main dynamic events will take place on Saturday and Sunday and will be streamed online
WHERE: Online
ONLINE: Formula Student – www.formulastudent.com.
Notes to Editors
- Contact the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Press Office on 020 7304 6877 or email media@imeche.org
- The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was established in 1847 and has some of the world’s greatest engineers in its history books. It is one of the fastest growing professional engineering institutions. Headquartered in London, we have operations around the world and over 120,000 members in more than 140 countries working at the heart of the most important and dynamic industries such as the automotive, rail, aerospace, medical, power and construction industries. www.imeche.org.