Research Project

For those of you who don't already know, all the Notre Dame engineers who enter the Perth study abroad program are required to complete one field research unit (unit is Aussie for course, course means major... it's all very confusing). I have attended a couple of meetings about the projects, but I haven't yet been assigned to a team. As of now I have two options.

First there is the REV Project. Last year, the Renewable Enery Vehicle (REV) Project successfully converted a four-door, five-passenger, combustion engine car into an electric vehicle. This year the same thing is being done with a two-seater sports car, the Lotus Elise. The idea behind the project is to show the viability of electric vehicles by converting cars already in production, rather than building prototypes that rarely ever make it to production. The cars are charged using electricity generated by the solar panels on the roof of the electrical engineering building on campus, making them 100% emission free.

The other project involves working on a "Driver-Assistance System" for a BMW X5. The system can also be referred to as autonomous driving. The goal is to develop a system in which the car itself can recognize lanes as well as detect and track other vehicles on the road. The system will alert the driver of dangerous situations, such as drifting into other lanes. The system will also assist in breaking if the car is nearing a collision. I also believe the system will feature some kind of steering assist as well. Although I already knew a lot about the REV Project before I came to Perth, I hadn't heard anything about the BMW project.

I'll probably find out exactly what I will be working on at the project meeting tomorrow. I'm leaning towards the REV Project with the Lotus Elise because I think the renewable energy aspect is more in line with the kind of work I want to do after I graduate. Although, I'm also very interested in innovation, and the Driver-Assistance System sounds really exciting. I discovered at the last meeting the specific tasks I could be responsible for if I work on the Lotus. Adding the electrical components and batteries and such will make the sports car much heavier than it was before. The team needs someone to research the capacity of the current brake system on the car. If the car is indeed too heavy then that person will have to find replacement brakes for the car that are strong enough to stop the added weight. That same person will also be responsible for researching the best way to implement a regenerative braking system. Another task requires designing a reinforcement for the supports of the battery cages. The two steel beams at the back of the car that the batteries are supposed to hang from is not strong enough (the batteries are very heavy!). I think the Computer Aided Design course I took last year would be very helpful in designing something like that.

No matter what task I am assigned, I'll be pretty happy to be doing research. It should be fun to finally start applying the things I've been learning over the past two years.

Also I've added a link to the REV Project in the links section on the right ---->
There's pictures of the cars and a much more detailed description of the project and its goals.