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Grooming the innovators of the future
Corporate sponsors in the electronics industry are working with General Motors and the US Department of Energy to provide real-world engineering experience to university students.
By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, and Jessica MacNeil, Contributing Editor -- EDN, 11/13/2008
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One such program is EcoCar: The Next Challenge, which has the support of the US Department of Energy, General Motors, The MathWorks, Freescale Semiconductor, National Instruments, and other sponsors, which are lending time, money, and products to the university-level competition (see sidebar "EcoCar competitors").
EcoCar aims to "advance the level of vehicle technology capable of reducing petroleum consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions" and to train the next generation of engineers to address sustainability and transportation issues, according to Connie Bezanson, lead engineer for program planning at the DOE.
To achieve this goal, students from 17 universities in the United States and Canada will spend three years redesigning and re-engineering a Saturn Vue to be more efficient and to have lower emissions. Teams representing the 17 universities converged at The MathWorks this summer for a week of training that kicked off the three-year competition.
The EcoCar competition builds on the DOE's 20-year history of sponsoring AVTCs (advanced-vehicle-technology competitions), said Bezanson, speaking during an interview during The MathWorks' kickoff event. Joining Bezanson were Cindy Svestka, executive technical assistant for power-train/vehicle integration at GM, and Paul Smith, director of North American consulting services at The MathWorks.
With EcoCar, the DOE is looking to train engineers of the future to address the sustainability issues and transportation issues that the country is facing, according to Bezanson. Many of the universities bring years of experience to EcoCar after participating in similar DOE-sponsored AVTC programs, including Challenge X and FutureTruck.
The MathWorks' Smith describes his company as a strong supporter of EcoCar and similar programs. "The MathWorks has a long history of being involved in student competitions as well as a strong bias toward the support of academia. One of our founders [Cleve Moler, chief scientist] comes out of that world and still participates in it actively. Our involvement goes right to the core mission of The MathWorks, which is to accelerate the pace of engineering and science."
During the first year, Smith explains, students will focus on model-based mechanical and electrical design of power-train components and controllers, using tools such as his company's Matlab and Simulink, as well as tools from other competition sponsors. In the second and third years, each team will integrate its design into a General Motors-provided Saturn Vue. The Saturn Vue, says GM's Svestke, platform is appropriate for the EcoCar challenge because Saturn is one of GM's green-focused brands; is amenable to modification in a nonproduction environment; and is a crossover vehicle that provides the function, utility, and economy that GM customers look for as they downsize from large SUVs.
With university-level competitions, the possibility always exists that technological breakthroughs could find use in the real world. That possibility is part of the impetus behind the DOD Grand Challenge autonomous-vehicle competition. With EcoCar, however, the primary goal is to instill in the next generation of engineers the knowledge of advanced vehicle technologies that current employees in GM's core businesses might lack. "We have a great hybrid team," says Svetska, "but it will need twice the number of people within the next 10 years." To that end, she adds, the entire competition mimics GM's own global-vehicle-development process. The EcoCar participants are "learning about the GM global-vehicle-development process, and they are learning a passion for alternative-fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles; that [combination is one] that you really can't find anywhere else."
EcoCar goes beyond the duplication of earlier programs. "One of the key differences between EcoCar and Challenge X," says Svestka, "is that we are pushing forward with HIL [hardware-in-the-loop] requirements for each of the teams. Our sponsors have generously agreed to provide HIL systems" for students to use in the first year of EcoCar competition. "We did have a few Challenge X teams who succeeded" with HIL implementations, she adds, "but it was on the order of four, not 15." Svestka says that the teams that did employ HIL really understood the challenges that they faced from the start, and they got the opportunity to perform lots of iterations upfront to develop a solid control strategy that they could carry forward when working with an actual vehicle.
National Instruments is one company providing HIL, says Paul Mandeltort, NI's automotive-communications-product manager. Mandeltort, a FutureTruck alumnus who used NI FieldPoint controllers in his competitive days, elaborates on earlier team efforts to use HIL: "We had students in the past, before HIL was a hot topic, who developed their own HIL systems using PXI. They actually simulated a lot of their models and controls," he says. "It gave them a nice little edge on the competition."
"I have seen this competition evolve from FutureTruck, where students were given a vehicle and would immediately take wrenches to it," says Mandeltort's colleague, Pete Zogas, NI's vice president of sales and marketing and a long-time sponsor of advanced-vehicle challenges. "Now, it's important that teams work out a strategy" through modeling before working with an actual vehicle. Zogas notes that NI's products have evolved along with the competition. In early competitions, teams used NI's products primarily for testing and diagnostics. "Now, they are much more synergistic with the design side, as well," he says.
HIL modeling represents "a critical step that we hadn't really worked into Challenge X, but we worked very hard to get it into EcoCar," says GM's Svetska. "We think that's gong to be a very big positive for the students, as well as for us." The level of refinement teams achieved with HIL approaches approached that of GM teams working to get a vehicle into production, she said.
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Although it won't immediately yield a production-ready vehicle design, the EcoCar program offers many benefits to sponsors in addition to well-trained graduate engineers. Smith says that students tend to stress software in ways that industrial users don't, providing valuable feedback. Bezanson says that engineers at Argonne National Laboratory, which manages the competition for the DOE, can learn from students as the students exercise the lab's PSAT (power-train-systems-analysis-tool-kit) software.
Ron Stence, a senior systems engineer at Freescale Semiconductor, believes that the competition offers strong opportunities for feedback. "I can look at what 17 teams are doing and watch mistakes happen in a gentler, kinder environment than you would have if you are working at Ford or GM or Chrysler," he says. The student teams "are able to go out and experiment and try things that normal car companies might not be willing to try. I get to see 17 attempts at trying to solve a problem, using radical technologies, such as fuel cells, biodiesel, and ethanol. For Freescale that [insight] is very valuable." In exchange, he says, Freescale provides a financial contribution as well as development kits, compilers, debuggers, and applications support.
The competition provides invaluable opportunities for networking and fosters good will with the DOE, GM, and other sponsors. "We don't normally see guys like Larry Nitz [GM's executive director for hybrid-power-train engineering] and Bob Lutz [GM's vice chairman of global-product development]," says Stence. "But they come to these events. It becomes a lot easier to share that information when there is a personal relationship; that's a side benefit we didn't anticipate going into earlier programs."
From a technological perspective, the competition provides insight into how teams were using various components from Free scale or other suppliers. "We are not going to judge down if someone uses someone else's microprocessor," he says. "But we are going to say, 'Show us how you are using that processor, tell us how you are using it, what unique functions does it have, what's your CPU loading, how much code did you download, and what did you learn by using it?'" And, because technology is only part of the innovation problem, Stence continues, "What is your plan for when you graduate in about three weeks to transition the schematics and the software and all the data to the next student who will take over for you?"
The DOE's Bezanson notes that the competition's judges will grade teams on both their business acumen and their technical skills. Successful teams will draw on business and marketing students and graphics designers as well as computer-science and aerospace-engineering students. Matthew Doude, a graduate mechanical-engineering student on the Mississippi State University team, reveals that the competition involves more than just engineering. He bases that opinion on his team's experience as a defending champion of Challenge X."Part of the competition is scored on how you outreach—how you tell people about what you're doing," he says. "During Challenge X, we reached more than 250,000 people, … showing people the vehicle on a one-on-one basis throughout the four years of the competition."
Doude was one of four mechanical-engineering students EDN interviewed at The MathWorks kickoff event (see sidebar "Students juggle class work, EcoCar efforts"), suggesting a dearth of electrical-engineering majors in the program, and students indicate that recruiting electrical engineers could prove difficult. But sponsors are hoping to change that situation. "The pushback we had based on Challenge X," says Freescale's Stence, "was increase the number of electrical engineers because cars are increasingly microprocessor- and software-based."
"If you looked at the student teams in the FutureTruck days, it was all mechanical engineers," concludes NI's Mandeltort. "Now, … the teams that do really well have a good mixture of electrical and mechanical experts."
| EcoCar competitors |
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EcoCar: The Next Challenge is a three-year competition including a training workshop at The MathWorks in Natick, MA, where the teams gathered in August. The competing universities are Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Howard University, Michigan Technological University, Mississippi State University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Texas Tech University, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, University of Victoria, University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and West Virginia University. |
| Students juggle class work, EcoCar efforts |
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By Jessica MacNeil, Contributing Editor According to Connie Bezanson, lead engineer for program planning at the Department of Energy, participating universities must provide some academic credit for challenge participants, a requirement that works out well for some students, for whom the competition is their main academic focus. For example, Beth Bezaire, a master's student at Ohio State University, will dedicate research hours to the project and plans to do her thesis on some component of the EcoCar project. For others, the hours they devoted to the challenge are a sacrifice because they receive less class credit for their time. "It is done at our school as a two-credit-hour course, which is not equal to the amount of time that you put into it," says Bob Warden, a senior mechanical-engineering major at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Through its experience with Challenge X, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has created a model-based design curriculum that will be useful in preparing younger students for this competition by giving them experience in the concepts and with relevant programs, such as Matlab and Simulink. Because the EcoCar challenge involves more than just building a car, the students will have more to gain from the competition. Working with a team, dealing with suppliers, and interacting with the media and community are real-life engineering experiences that go beyond the technology. "I'm really looking forward to the interpersonal skills: working with a team, figuring out how to make a team function well,getting done all we need to get done, and learning those types of skills that you learn from being on a project team, not just from taking classes," says Bezaire. Learning these skills in a real industry environment is also beneficial because ofthe people the students have the opportunity to meet. Professionals involved in the program serve as examples to follow, potential future references, and career mentors for the students."The contacts that you meet through something like this are invaluable," says Matthew Doude, a graduate mechanical-engineering student whose Mississippi State University team comes in as the defending champions of the earlier Challenge X competition. The environment also enhances the experience because the competitors learn to act in a more professional manner than they would on a campus. "It really helps make some of the younger guys grow up, which is something that is hard to teach unless they realize it themselves," says Warden. On a larger scale, the competition could benefit everyone asthe teams work to develop a more efficient and eco-friendly car for the future. "This is an exciting program because we're [moving] to different types of energy—getting away from oil—and that's extremely important," says Doude. "In the next 10 years, the auto industry will start looking at all these kinds of energy, and that's definitely a reason I got involved in this competition, because now is really a critical time for the industry." Although some team leaders outlined plans to use electricity to fuel their redesigned Saturn Vues, Howard Mearns, a graduate studenton theWest Virginia University team, predicts his teamwould focus on a readily available approach. "We would like to take an approach closer to the technology that's here," says Mearns. "The infrastructure [for plug-in electric vehicles] isn't around yet. If everybody plugged their car in tonight, the grid would crash. There isn't the capacity for that kind of thing, so we'll probably be looking at a hybrid but a full hybrid that you don't see in this market." Although the students are interested in winning the competition, they see the value participation will havefor them, their schools, and the planet. "This is about being a cohesive team," says Bezaire. "This is not a cutthroat competition. We want everyone to learn and to gain a lot out of it." |
