Race Time Calculator for the F1 in Schools competition. Built with: Py 🐍, Streamlit
We are a dedicated team of students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School participating in this year's U.S. National F1 in Schools competition. As a rookie team in 2017, we placed 1st in New York, 2nd in the New York Super Regionals, and 9th overall nationwide. All members of the Roosevelt Racers have 200+ hours of experience in their specialized fields. This year, we are the only team from New York. If we win or come in second place nationally, we'll advance to the World Finals.
This is what it looks like IRL:
The Race Time Calculator, built by RR's R&D team, the purpose of the race time calculator is the evaluate if a dragster model is worthy enough be manufactured. The goal of the R&D team is to improve and accelerate the proccess of creating our dragster and we developed this for the team as an internal software. Our vision is to create products good enough for other teams to use as well.
The Race Time Calculator will serve as a virtual track for F1 in schools teams. However, this app is more than that. With our app we will solve the following problems currently present in the whole F1 in schools competetion:
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Lower the barrier of entry: If a school wanted to test their dragster they would need to purchase a track. The track costs $4000. We will allow underprivileged schools to join the competition by giving them access to our race time calculator.
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Help existing teams without a track: In 2017, a team from Michigan asked if they could come all the way to NYC to test their car model because we have a track. They came all the way to Eleanor Roosevelt Highschool to test their model and their dragster actually won second place nationaly. This made us realize how crucial it was to test car models which kicked off the project for a Race Time Calculator in R&D.
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Streamline the development process: All teams will be able to benefit from this app. If a team used the Race Time calculator they would be able to iterate through multiple models extremely quickly. This is because they would be able to calculate the theortical end time of their car model, IF their manufacturing was perfect. Therefore, if they calculated that their car reached their time goals then the only process the engineering team needs to worry about is polishing their manufacturing as much as possible.
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Data driven decision: Last but not least our Race Time Calculator will allow for data driven decisions. Teams will be able to log data between calculated time vs real time to optimize their development process. They will also be able to "debug" their car using the Race Time Calculator by comparing data between iterations and data with real life tests.
The first version of the Race Time Calculator used a model developed by the 2017 RND team. It had flaws which the team was aware of but unable to solve because the model would be more complicated and require a lot more computation. Still 2017 won the best RND award in the nationals competeion for their research. V2 will solve these flaws and create a more accurate model of the Race Time calculator. V2 will also have a sleeker and more polished website than version one. This new version would be a big leap foward for the current RND team because it would provide the Roosevelt Racer's team with a newer and more accurate model while also developing a sleek app; as far as we know, no other team has this type of technology.
Visit the site to find out 😊