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The TUfast Eco Team is a student team with around 40 members who design and build a highly efficient electric car every year. In 2016, the team set the world record for the most efficient electric car with a reach of 1232,27 km/kWh which equals 10957,02 km/l Super 95 with the prototype „eLi14“. In 2017, the team built their first UrbanConcept car muc017. This category aims for the concept of a car which could once drive in our cities. This requires space for luggage, lighting, an upright seating position etc.
For the 2018 Shell Eco-marathon Europe, the TUfast Eco team has built a new UrbanConcept, called muc018, with autonomous driving capabilities. There are various challenges to fullfil at the competition, e.g. a track drive on the efficiency circuit. For this, the maxon-powered brake is required to be able to safely stop the vehicle.
The competition where a well-functioning brake is really important is the „Parking challenge“. This challenge requires to detect a blue parking block with a parking area in front of it. The car should then navigate to this area and come to a full stop as close to the block as possible. We were the only team to successfully complete this challenge which was a bit challenging because the parking block was located on a piece of the track going downhill. The other teams couldn’t apply their brakes strong enough to come to a stop.
The brake system is based on a maxon RE-motor with attached ceramic gearbox which is pulling the brake pedal. This design allows us to completely remove the autonomous system for the efficiency challenge where low weight is a key factor. The motor is driven by an ESCON controller which allows us to easily tune the drive and integrate with our realtime computer. The brake system has proven to be very effective and still easily tunable.
Maximilian Mühlbauer, Head of Autonomous Driving for muc018
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