The use of computers in the formula 1 (Part 1)
Some time ago on Habré there was already an article about electronics in Formula 1, I would like to show a more detailed analysis of this aspect of the royal races.
In 1950, the first Formula One World Championship was held, won by Italian Giuseppe Farina at Alfa Romeo. He had a fast, but heavy and clumsy machine. Years passed and the weight of the car decreased, they began to turn, brake, and look better too. Although this is a matter of taste. Along with Formula 1 machines, the field of information technology has evolved, computers have begun to emerge that are capable of performing more and more operations per second, and this has contributed to their introduction into various spheres of human life. They didn’t go around computers and Formula 1, they began to use them everywhere: to record lap time (at first it was done by special people who wrote a log for each pilot, every lap with a stopwatch), for designing a car (by the way, an interesting fact, so far only one engineer left in the paddock of formula 1, who projects not on a computer, but on a drawing board — the brilliant Adrian Newey ), to check the car’s aerodynamic characteristics, telemetry processing, to control the engine, ignition, gearbox and control car as a whole. I would like to devote the first article to electronics, which is in the car.
So, I will start in 2006, when the FIA (Federation International de M'Automobile - International Federation of Motor Sports) selected one of the participants of the Formula 1 World Championship in ring racing as a manufacturer and supplier of an electronic car control unit. They became the team of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, and more specifically, a division of McLaren electronics. And in 2008, an ECU appeared on all Formula 1 cars.
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The ECU (Electronic Control Unit) is the main computer in a Formula 1 car. It consists of three main parts - sensors, a small information output unit and the main computer itself, its characteristics will be written below. In the process of moving the car of formula 1, a huge number of different characteristics change, affecting each other and, most importantly, on the speed of movement. It is not difficult to guess that the sensors are used to collect information, they measure such characteristics as tire pressure, rubber temperature, fuel consumption mode, temperature of the fuel mixture, lubricants, hydrodynamic characteristics and much more. All this information, of the order of several hundred parameters, is collected by ECU sensors and fed into the TAG-310B or TAB-320, so are the two versions of this unified unit. Let's stop on the last one.
All devices with ECU TAG-310B are connected by the principle of a star .
Technical characteristics:
The operating voltage is 7.5-16V DC.
The TAGOS 32-bit operating system is a real-time operating system that responds to changes in any parameters and processes them instantly.
Processor Speed - 1700 MIPS
Memory - 1 Gb Flash, 16Mb SRAM.
Operating temperature from -10 ° C to + 85 ° C.
Vibrations from 100 to 1000 Hz, in any direction, within 24 hours.
This is what ECU is from McLaren Electronics. This thing that weighs only 1.5 kg drives the car inside and out. And it allows not only recording information, but also transmitting it to the command bridge once a lap, while driving past the pit lane. There is also a secondary broadcast system of certain parameters of the car, working in the "online" mode. It serves for television broadcasts and regulating the actions of racers and conveys information about DRS , KERS , current gears and more parameters of the car. This information is transmitted from the car constantly to the technical bridge of the stewards (judges) of the race and from there to the broadcast. Because There is little data, it uses a slower data channel.
Unfortunately, I could not find accurate information about the transmission technology, but apparently this is done via wireless data transfer technology with a speed of about 10-15 Mbit for the main system. Software for ECU is developed by Microsoft .
The story turned out to be short, but the information on this area is not so much, because Formula 1 is a battle not only on the track, but also a race of technologies. And nobody wants to reveal their secrets, alas.
If you have any questions, I am ready to answer them in the comments. In the future, if this is an interesting topic for the community, I want to talk about CFD - the computational fluid dynamics system and Nick Wirth's company - Wirth research.
In 1950, the first Formula One World Championship was held, won by Italian Giuseppe Farina at Alfa Romeo. He had a fast, but heavy and clumsy machine. Years passed and the weight of the car decreased, they began to turn, brake, and look better too. Although this is a matter of taste. Along with Formula 1 machines, the field of information technology has evolved, computers have begun to emerge that are capable of performing more and more operations per second, and this has contributed to their introduction into various spheres of human life. They didn’t go around computers and Formula 1, they began to use them everywhere: to record lap time (at first it was done by special people who wrote a log for each pilot, every lap with a stopwatch), for designing a car (by the way, an interesting fact, so far only one engineer left in the paddock of formula 1, who projects not on a computer, but on a drawing board — the brilliant Adrian Newey ), to check the car’s aerodynamic characteristics, telemetry processing, to control the engine, ignition, gearbox and control car as a whole. I would like to devote the first article to electronics, which is in the car.
So, I will start in 2006, when the FIA (Federation International de M'Automobile - International Federation of Motor Sports) selected one of the participants of the Formula 1 World Championship in ring racing as a manufacturer and supplier of an electronic car control unit. They became the team of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, and more specifically, a division of McLaren electronics. And in 2008, an ECU appeared on all Formula 1 cars.
')
The ECU (Electronic Control Unit) is the main computer in a Formula 1 car. It consists of three main parts - sensors, a small information output unit and the main computer itself, its characteristics will be written below. In the process of moving the car of formula 1, a huge number of different characteristics change, affecting each other and, most importantly, on the speed of movement. It is not difficult to guess that the sensors are used to collect information, they measure such characteristics as tire pressure, rubber temperature, fuel consumption mode, temperature of the fuel mixture, lubricants, hydrodynamic characteristics and much more. All this information, of the order of several hundred parameters, is collected by ECU sensors and fed into the TAG-310B or TAB-320, so are the two versions of this unified unit. Let's stop on the last one.
All devices with ECU TAG-310B are connected by the principle of a star .
Technical characteristics:
The operating voltage is 7.5-16V DC.
The TAGOS 32-bit operating system is a real-time operating system that responds to changes in any parameters and processes them instantly.
Processor Speed - 1700 MIPS
Memory - 1 Gb Flash, 16Mb SRAM.
Operating temperature from -10 ° C to + 85 ° C.
Vibrations from 100 to 1000 Hz, in any direction, within 24 hours.
This is what ECU is from McLaren Electronics. This thing that weighs only 1.5 kg drives the car inside and out. And it allows not only recording information, but also transmitting it to the command bridge once a lap, while driving past the pit lane. There is also a secondary broadcast system of certain parameters of the car, working in the "online" mode. It serves for television broadcasts and regulating the actions of racers and conveys information about DRS , KERS , current gears and more parameters of the car. This information is transmitted from the car constantly to the technical bridge of the stewards (judges) of the race and from there to the broadcast. Because There is little data, it uses a slower data channel.
Unfortunately, I could not find accurate information about the transmission technology, but apparently this is done via wireless data transfer technology with a speed of about 10-15 Mbit for the main system. Software for ECU is developed by Microsoft .
The story turned out to be short, but the information on this area is not so much, because Formula 1 is a battle not only on the track, but also a race of technologies. And nobody wants to reveal their secrets, alas.
If you have any questions, I am ready to answer them in the comments. In the future, if this is an interesting topic for the community, I want to talk about CFD - the computational fluid dynamics system and Nick Wirth's company - Wirth research.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/143156/
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