Date
05/06/2014
PDF
Students from Slovak University of Technology Bratislava won the final round of the EMEA Freescale Cup Challenge 2014, hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen.
The Freescale Cup, sponsored by Freescale Semiconductor, is a global competition where student teams build, program and race an intelligent model car around a track. The car is autonomous and must stay on the racetrack at all times. The fastest car to complete the track without going off the track wins the race. Cars are powered by Freescale 32-bit Qorriva® or Kinetis MCU technology, which are state of the art products widely used in the industry. The cars share the same chassis basis and use similar batteries.
75 students, from 25 teams representing their respective university from 11 European countries raced their cars on the 2014 Freescale Cup track at Fraunhofer IIS. The 180 sq/m racetrack consisted of speed bumps, intersections, hills and chicane curves. Students have been working for the past 6 months to assemble, program and test their vehicles. They had 1 ½ day to test and fine tune their vehicles before the decisive race. The team FEI - Minetors, won the competition, finishing just ahead of team POLIce, from the Politecnico Milano, Italy, and team KNE Fideltronic, from the AGH University of Science and Technology Krakow, Poland.
“The Freescale Cup continues to attract a growing number of students and educators thanks to its fast pace and linkage to automotive and robotics applications” said Flavio Stiffan, responsible for the University Programs in EMEA. “I am confident that the learning achieved during the last 6 months will support those students in successfully develop their career in engineering. The industry values very much students that have “hands-on” experience in state of the art technologies, and that demonstrated ability to collaborate, innovate and challenge themselves”.
Albert Heuberger, Leiter des Fraunhofer IIS: “Fraunhofer IIS hosted the international student competition “Freescale Cup” for the past two days. The fascination with technology, the commitment of all participants as well as fairplay were tangible all around. Our conclusion: technology unites. That is why we, as a global leader in applied research, were extremely pleased to host the Freescale Cup EMEA finals.”
The best 2 teams are invited to attend the Freescale Cup Worldwide Finals that will be held in Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea on August 29–30, 2014 to race their vehicle against finalists from other regions.
In addition to participating in the competition, students got the opportunity to share their work and network with their peers, faculty, and Freescale engineers, industry partners and customers. The teams of up to three students each received a standard Freescale Cup car kits in October and have been working with their school professors to create the fastest smart car in the EMEA region.
The creation of this intelligent car requires:
• embedded software programming and basic circuit creation using Freescale parts included in the entry kit
• students to create motor control hardware and software to propel and steer their intelligent car
• students to interface with a camera to navigate the car through the race course by following the guideline
The standard intelligent car components are the model car kit, servo, electric motors, a battery with a charger and a quick start guide. Below is a list of the specific elements by function:
• Chassis – 1/18 Scale model
• Propulsion – 7.2V DC motors (one for each rear wheel)
• Steering - servo motor
• Control system – Freescale Qorivva MPC5606B automotive controller or ARM® Cortex®- M Kinetis MCU industrial controller
• Motor control – Freescale analog board featuring MC33931 H-Bridge
• Guidance – CMOS camera
143 teams from 51 universities in 15 countries enrolled into the 2013–2014 season’s competition.
ARM® and Mathworks are the 2 global sponsors present at the event. Their engagement into the Freescale Cup provide hardware and software support to the students. Fraunhofer IIS is an EMEA partner and host of the event for the 2014 EMEA Challenge.
Online resources
Final results, pictures & videos of the event are available on the Freescale Community University Site. Online lectures focusing on the Freescale Cup smart car are posted on the Freescale Community University Site and on the Freescale training site to provide further information to the students, allowing them to find hints about how to optimize their project.
The Freescale Community Forum includes students from around the world, helping each other and, with the added support from Freescale employees, providing answers to some of the more complicated questions.
• EMEA Coordination: Flavio Stiffan flavio.stiffan@freescale.com
• Freescale Communities University Programs: https://community.freescale.com/community/uvp
• Freescale University Program: www.freescale.com/universityprograms
• Freescale Cup Knowledge Center: https://community.freescale.com/docs/DOC-1284
The EMEA Freescale Cup 2014–15 season
Enrollments for the 2014–15 season will start in May with information meetings at the interested schools.
