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    F1 Paw x Paw team were: Polo Lopez, Ethan French, Sean Nelson, Brandon Richard, Cade Murray, Nicholas Enloe and Sahara Bouckley, including their winning vehicles. CENTURY NEWS PHOTO BY GARY ZUPANCIC

World class F1 team receives engineering award

High school underdog Paw x Paw shines in England
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The team concept and working with others is mandatory and mimics what the students will learn in the real world, where art, engineering, and creativity come together. 

PAW X PAW Teams started out as the afterthought, became the belle of the ball. Dripping Springs High School’s second F1 team impressed the heck out of Land Rover/Jaguar engineers to achieve the ACES Award at the F1 World Finals.

The team went to England as a wild card, where the first team earned their right by winning at the Circuit of the Americas earlier this year. The judges liked the fact that the junior team came in second and also got a bid to go to England on a wild card.

“More than 150 talented future engineers from schools in 20 countries will meet in the West Midlands for the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge world finals,” according to the official website.

There is so much more involved than just racing remote controlled funny cars. The software must be perfect to travel the obstacle course laid out by the Land Rover/Jaguar hosts. Also are marketing presentations complete with marketing materials. The team concept and working with others is mandatory and mimics what the students will learn in the real world, where art, engineering, and creativity come together. 

The challenge “requires students to build a radio controlled four-wheel drive (4x4) vehicle to the specifications (height, weight, length, etc.) provided by the International Rules Committee, (of Land Rover/Jaguar). It must successfully navigate and complete obstacles on an off-road test track… The vehicle must emulate the capabilities of a full size 4x4 vehicle,” according to the challenge website.

Very sad to say the first (DSHS) team’s car had a problem with their vehicle. But here’s the good part. The second team, PAW X PAW got the ACES award for their engineering. The concept coming from high school students, it is beyond belief and to use an overused term “mind-blowing,” because it really is.

First the ACES Award, ACES stands for Autonomous, Connected, Electric, & Shared Vehicles. The concept is peering into the very near future. Goodbye gas engines, hello computer run electric cars. All the big automakers, both domestic and worldwide along with other technology companies are using this information now in testing cars.

Automated electric cars are in their final stages and the cars will have to autonomous of course, but also connected to the internet, and also be connected to other vehicles surrounding them so somebody doesn’t pull some boneheaded shenanigan.

Cade Murray and Polo Lopez worked on an algorithm tool to recognize street signs. “Noticing a difference between stop, yield, 43 different signs were fed into (the computer) of 39,000 pics and as you add more signs and retrain the model,” Lopez said. The photos also were signs in different types of weather, which could be misinterpreted.

“Using computer vision live, we have static images now, and using color filter as we can crop out the background. Testing should help,’ Murray said. “This is used in conjunction with a computer to be able to make safe decisions. Telemetry and GPS points can be used to know where the car is, off road has different decisions than if they were on a highway…it all comes together to make the safest car without human interaction.”

As for the overall race? “We got ninth, but our award was pretty big. They were very impressed with the road sign recognition,” team manager Sahara Bouckley said. She’ll be attending Texas A&M in the fall.

Paw x Paw will have several returning vets to keep the awards to keep DSHS teacher/advisor/mentor Jad Jadeja’s Programming, Robotics, Engineering, Corner Stone and CAD program, continuing and generating new ideas, and of course winning world class awards.

 

 

 

 

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